Bible Q & A

Q. Many of your articles effectively refute evolution and support the Bible. Yet you seem to believe the earth is a lot older than the 6,000 years that Genesis indicates. Isn’t this a contradiction? Or are you just giving in to pressure from the scientific establishment?
 
A. The Bible reveals that God is the Creator of heaven and earth “and all that in them is” (Gen. 1:1; Ex. 20:11) We believe that the evidence from modern biology, geology, and paleontology strongly supports the concept of special creation and that evolution, as it is usually taught, is a mistaken interpretation of that evidence.

On the other hand, the Bible does not say when creation took place. Scientific evidence based on studies of radiometric dating, geological changes, and ecological succession strongly implies a very old age for the earth.

Some people have attempted to deduce the time of creation from the biblical ages of the patriarchs (the famous Ussher chronology dates creation at 4004 B.C.), but the date of creation does not necessarily coincide with the age of the earth. Though we may conclude that Adam was created about 6,000 years ago, there is certainly no biblical proof that the earth – along with certain prehistoric creatures such as the dinosaurs-- could not have been created long before 4,000 B.C. Indeed, a pre-Adamic world is consistent with scriptures dealing with Satan’s role in God’s creation.

The exact age of the earth remains a mystery. But when the Bible is correctly understood, there is nothing to keep us from accepting scientific evidence placing the age of the earth at millions or even billions of years. We have nothing to fear from the truth, even if it comes from the so-called “scientific establishment.”
 
The Church of God, New World Ministries P.O. Box 5536 Sevierville, TN 37864