In an age of
exploration and fascinating scientific discoveries, Anabaptist Christians are asking
questions of current importance that require honest and satisfying biblical
answers. “How old is the earth?”[i]
“Could the Universe be billions of years old?” “Is our society’s view of
origins compatible with Genesis 1?” I myself have wondered whether the Bible really
treats this subject with enough clarity as to preclude an “old earth” view of
origins. I would like to invite you to look at three lines of evidence I found
in God’s Word that convinced me that our Universe was directly created by God
in only six days in its entirety, and without any time gaps at the Foundation
of the earth
But first, I would
like to provide some quick facts on a view that has only become popular among
mainstream Christianity since the beginning of the 19th Century[ii]:
Old Earth Creationism. It is a view I believe is beginning to be considered and
adopted by some conservative Anabaptists as we speak. What is Old Earth
creationism?
·
Old Earth creationism[iii]
is a general term that covers gap creationism[iv],
progressive creationism[v],
and evolutionary creationism[vi].
·
Christians[vii]
who are Old Earth creationists (OECs), as well as their humanist counterparts, generally
believe Planet Earth is as old as 4.5 billion years, and the Universe, 14
billion years.
·
Belief in Old Earth creationism leads to the acceptance of death before
the Fall of man, which in turn leads to the idea that the Flood of Noah’s time likely
wasn’t global.
·
Not all OECs believe in the Big Bang or in evolutionary creationism.
·
Not all OECs disbelieve the literal six 24-hour-day Creation.
I. Was
the “raw” Universe created outside the Creation week?
Gap creationists
believe that the foundation or framework of the universe was created at a point
in a very distant past. The creation of this cosmic framework is separated from
Day One of the Creation week by a gap of billions of years. Some also believe that
the original world eventually was destroyed by a cataclysm called Lucifer’s
Flood, and out of the resulting chaos (cosmic wasteland) God made the world we
know today.
But in light of
what the Bible says, could the earth, sun, moon and stars have been created
millions of years before Day One of the Creation week? To my knowledge, there
are only three passages in the Bible that speak to this. The first one, of
course, is found in Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Perhaps, we could
say this verse does not specify whether heaven and earth were completely finished at the time of
creation. But it does tell us that there was a beginning, and that heaven and
earth did not exist before this Beginning. This would seem unnecessary to
mention, but do keep it in mind for later.
The next passage is
found in Exodus 31:17:
It [the Sabbath] is a sign between me and the children of Israel for
ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh
day he rested, and was refreshed.
This passage provides
an important detail: “in six days”. What happened within six days? The LORD
made heaven and earth. By this we know without a doubt that the whole Universe was made within the six
days of Creation.
The last clue is
found earlier, in Exodus Chapter 20, verse 11:
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the
sabbath day, and hallowed it.
This
verse is more explicit than the previous one. It provides additional details
regarding what was made within the six days of Creation. Heaven and earth, including
all it contains, were made by the LORD at the very beginning, within the six days of Creation, and not
before. Some have suggested a distinction between the verb “create” and “make”.
They claim that God created the
Universe and Planet Earth at a point in time in the distant past, and billions
of years later, He made “all that in
them is”. But this passage breaks down the argument, because it says that God
not only made the contents of the
universe within six days, He also made
heaven and earth during the same period. It seems abundantly clear that the
Beginning and the six-day Creation week are one and the same.
II. Was
the Creation of the Universe complete
at the Beginning?
I suppose something
most conservative Anabaptists take for granted is that the creation of the
Universe was initiated and completed between Day One and Day Six of the
creation week. However, it’s interesting to note that the logic of Old Earth
creationism, especially gap creationism, requires the initiation of Creation to
occur before the Beginning. How so? When
one believes there was a gap between the initiation of the Universe and the
making of “all that in them is”, one is forced to believe that divine creative
activities were occurring long before the Beginning, since, as we saw above,
the Beginning and the six-day creation week are synonymous. In order to be
certain of the possibility of a cosmic gap, I suppose one would need to look
for a biblical warrant for a first
Beginning and a second Beginning,
which I have not been able to find.
Another view among
gap creationists involves the idea of day-ages. Each day of the creation week
may represent a period of millions or billions of years.
When we search the
Bible, we find two passages that speak to this:
From the beginning of creation God
made them male and female. Mark 10:6
He which made them at the beginning
made them male and female. Matthew 19:4
It
couldn’t have been said clearer: Humankind was made at the Beginning of
creation, not billions of years later. The biblical fact that humans were made
on the last day of creation leads us to believe that the last day of Creation
must also be considered as the Beginning. If Jesus called Day Six “the
Beginning”, would it be reasonable to say that the Bible allows room for
millions of years between Day One and Day Six, while placing both days equally at
the Beginning? And how reasonable is it to believe that the Beginning took
millions or billions of years to begin?
III. Was
the Beginning at the Foundation of the earth?
Let’s look at the subject from another angle. Could
there have been a gap of billions of years between the Foundation of the earth
and the Beginning? Did God’s creative work continue billions of years after He
laid the foundations of Planet Earth?
I have found four
passages in Scripture that speak about the foundation of the earth or the world.
The first one is Isaiah 40:21:
Hath it not been told you from the
beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
Not a strong
argument, but it does seem to imply that humans, able to hear and understand,
existed from the Beginning as well as from the Foundations of the earth. Could this
possibly mean they are both the exact same events?
The second verse
tells us about Abel, the first martyred prophet:
That the blood of the prophets, which was
shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation; from
the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias. Luke 11:50, 51
This passage
explains that the blood of the prophets was shed from the foundation of the
world[viii]. Abel, Adam’s second son, lived only several years after the creation
of his parents. Apparently, he lived and died so close to the Beginning that
even he was said to have lived at the Foundation of the world. Would it be
reasonable to think that there was a gap of millions of years between the
Foundation and the completion of Creation at the Beginning?
The third verse is
more specific:
The works were finished from the foundation of the world…and God
did rest the seventh day from all his works. Hebrews 4:3, 4
God rested on the
seventh day from all His creative works, because his creative activities were
indeed completed at the very foundation of the world.
And finally, a
passage that seems to be a direct answer to our question, “Was the Beginning at
the Foundation of the earth?”
Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast
laid the foundation of the earth. Hebrews 1:10
After seeing all
this biblical evidence for myself, I had to wonder whether the controversy
between traditional creationism and Old Earth
creationism is a matter of opinion or a matter of belief. Does it really matter
whether God created the world within six 24-hour days or across billions of years?
The three lines of
arguments I have found in Scripture have given me abundant and satisfying
evidence that the Bible does teach that our Universe was directly created by
God in only six days in its entirety, and without any time gaps at the
Foundation of the earth. If God had not recorded any of this, then I would be
willing to accept that none of it is important to our understanding of God. But
since He did, and He did it in a very careful and detailed fashion, I find that
recent Creation is a truth worthy of universal acceptance and belief among
Christians everywhere. To me, the controversy between Young Earth and Old Earth
creationism seems to be more a matter of belief in the veracity and authority
of God’s Word than of personal opinion or lack of biblical clarity.
-E.S. Gutwein
[i] I have not taken the
time to explain how the Bible teaches a 6,000 year-old Earth, but check out the
following link for an explanation: http://creation.com/6000-years.
[ii] Stephen Lawell, The
Gap Theory (Echoes of Eden, 2008), p. 13.
[iv] “Simply stated, the
gap theory is the idea that a long period of time transpired between God’s
initial creation in Genesis 1:1 when He ‘created the heaven and the earth’ and
Genesis 1:2 when the earth was ‘without form and void’” (The Gap Theory,
p. 7).
[v] “Progressive
creationism…is the belief that God created new forms of life gradually over a
period of hundreds of millions of years” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_creationism).
[vi] “Theistic evolution,
theistic evolutionism, or evolutionary creationism are views that regard religious
teachings about God as compatible with modern scientific understanding about
biological evolution….Supporters of theistic evolution generally harmonize
evolutionary thought with belief in God, rejecting the conflict thesis
regarding the relationship between religion and science – they hold that
religious teachings about creation and scientific theories of evolution need
not contradict each other.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution).
[vii] To clarify, this
essay employs the term “Christian” in a general way for nominal and faithful
believers indistinctively.
[viii] The term “world”
(Gr. cosmos) in the New Testament
refers to several things including the universe, the inhabitants of the earth,
and Planet Earth itself. While the term “world” is broader than “earth”, it
certainly includes Planet Earth.
