Genesis states, "The earth was without form. It is defined as a verb that means "to exist, that is, be or become, come to pass. Based on its use in other verses Genesis , , 20 , however, a more accurate translation of hayah in Genesis would render the verse "The earth BECAME without form, and void. Tohu is defined as formless, confusion, empty, or a wasteland. Bohu means an indistinguishable ruin or emptiness. This information means that the earth, after it was initially created Genesis became an empty and indistinguishable ruin.
What, however, could have caused something created by the hand of God to turn into an old wasteland? Lucifer and all the angels are quite old, as they were created long before mankind. When God first made the earth all the angels sung with joy Job - 7. Something, however, happened to Lucifer. The analogy here between six days of creation and six days of human labor conveys to many people the impression that corresponding periods of time are being alluded to.
Thank you for your help. Those include: 1. Like what you're reading and listening to on the Postmodern Realities Podcast? Young earth creationists YEC believe the universe and all life forms were created in six successive hour days, meaning earth is only thousands of years old. Major arguments for each view include the following:. That takes longer than 24 hours. This indicated that by God's design, animal death preceded the fall of Adam and Eve.
Plants spouted, grew to maturity, and produced seeds. Several kinds of plants are described. The Hebrew word deshe 9 refers primarily to grasses; the word eseb 10 refers primarily to herbs and the words peri 11 ets 12 refer to fruit trees.
Some Christians claim that God could have sped up the process so that it all this sprouting and growing happened within a period of hours. However, the text clearly states that the land produced the vegetation and trees.
Conjecture about what God could have done to speed up the process have no biblical support and directly contradict what the text actually says. Since fruit trees take several years to mature and produce fruit, the third "day" must have been at least several years long. The sixth day was also a very busy "day. Then God created Adam, the first man Genesis , He placed the man into a special garden that He had planted Genesis Again, God was playing farmer by planting the garden and letting it grow Genesis Adam was placed into the garden "to work it and take care of it" Genesis We don't know how long Adam worked the garden before God gave him another assignment.
However, it wouldn't have been much "work" if Adam was there for less than 24 hours. Next, God had Adam give names to "all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air" Genesis The process would have required Adam naming tens of thousands of species minimum.
Even naming one animal every ten seconds would have taken Adam several days, at minimum. Adam's response to Eve's creation is also telling, since upon seeing Eve for the first time, Adam said "at last. So, we must conclude that the sixth day was much longer than 24 hours, and probably took at least several years, based on Adam's response.
Besides the biblical evidence that at least some of the Genesis "days" are long periods of time, Genesis refers to all 6 days of creation as one day:. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
In all other days the text says, "there is the evening and the morning, the n day. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. Hebrews By any calculation, God's seventh day of rest from creating has been at least 6, years long, since it continues to today. God's seventh day of rest from creating will end when He creates the new heavens and new earth.
Other than incomplete genealogies, there are other measures of the age of humanity found in the Bible. First, the Bible says that the Lord made a covenant and commanded his law to 1, generations:. Unless those generations are only 6 years long, these verses indicate that humanity has been around much longer than 6, years.
Another, less accurate way to look at the age of humanity is to compare an early biblical event with earth's natural history. One example is the person Peleg, of whom it is said "for in his days the earth was divided During this time, sea levels rose several hundred feet as continental ice sheets melted and flowed into the oceans. Since it would seem likely that more of the earlier genealogies are missing, the estimate is likely low, probably being more in line with the biblical 40, years.
From a scientific standpoint, I would place the creation of Adam as the first modern human Homo sapiens sapiens , corresponding with the explosion of sophisticated tool making, art, and religious worship in Europe, about 50, years ago. Contrary to the calculation of Archbishop Ussher, it seems that the biblical genealogies are telescoped, representing only a small percentage of the actual human generations.
Therefore, the time that humanity has existed on earth is in the tens of thousands of years rather than thousands of years. However, humanity was the very last of God's creations, on the sixth days. The days of creation can be shown to be longer than ordinary calendar days, with at least two of the days being years long or longer in addition to the seventh day, which is a minimum of thousands of years long.
So, although the Bible may give us an approximate date for the creation of human beings, we can only guess at how long the other creation "days" are. However, God has given us another "book" that testifies to His power and creative ability—none other than the creation itself. The Bible explicitly tells us that God's creation is a reliable witness for the truth about God's power and righteousness.
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