What year was it when the world began?
There are no good answers to this question. The traditional view held by many is that it was around 6,000 years ago. They get this by adding up the records of genealogy recorded for Christ, checking the Old Testament for when named individuals were born to their parents, and then adding the current number of years post his birth. Since this document will exist for some time, I'm not going to give an exact number here, and there is debate as to the year Christ was born anyway.
Others in Christianity try to say that the creation account is just a story and all that is important is the New Testament, trying to duck the questions of science. They're happy with an age of the universe of billions of years and don't want to get bogged down in details that the traditionalists can't reconcile with science.
Others attempt to warp science to fit their viewpoints or discredit science completely or make up some alternate science to fit their dating of history. This is not helpful in leading the modern generation to Christ, and that's what is important. Fortunately it isn't necessary either.
The discussion below is not the popular one that is prevalent in Christianity today and has been prevalent for ages. I believe it matches what the rest of scripture says and fits with science. I realize that it is unlikely to sway any die-hard traditionalists, but there are places where each interpretation of Genesis 1 overlap and match. I believe that it is more consistent with scripture in the rest of the Bible than the traditional viewpoint. This interpretation allows acceptance of most scientific revelations that have become more pronounced as observations of space and the ability to date items via Carbon or radioactive decay have become available.
I would urge traditionalists and young earth creationists to read and consider it prayerfully. The number of people who flat out reject anything Christian because of YEC beliefs has been growing year after year. The number of Christian kids who reject the faith, partially because of YEC beliefs is also growing. As I said above, I probably won't convert you with this page, but if you can at least recognize that there are alternatives which don't conflict with the Bible, don't diminish God, don't change anything about salvation or what really matters, and tone down the absolute dogma that you present, you might have a better chance of leading the modern generation to Christ. Only God is right about everything.
Whether you end up agreeing with me and others like me or not, you owe it to yourselves and those you know to pray about what is presented here. If our ideas are wrong, so be it. But you'll need to figure out what the other scriptures are saying if we're correct. At the very least, realizing that what you heard as a youth might have been just an easy traditional answer, but not a complete answer, might make it easier to understand or witness to someone from the modern era. And, by the way, I know this isn't complete either. But I think it is more complete than what tradition has claimed.
Original Creation
The Bible does not declare the year of the beginning. All that we know is that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." See Genesis 1-2 for the full account. To me, Genesis 1:1 sounds pretty much like the "Big Bang" that the astrophysicists believe happened.
Isaiah 45:18 declares that the Earth was not created in a without form or waste state, depending on the translation. It was created to be inhabited. Yet in Genesis 1:2 we see the earth described this way. In Genesis 1:2 the translated word was comes from the verb become and not to be, so it could be translated "And the earth became without form or waste and void or empty." The word translated as dry land later in Genesis is the same as the earth in Genesis 1:1. Yet in Genesis 1:2, everything is covered with water. Why is this so? The following interpretation of Genesis 1 combined with other scriptures in the Bible posits that it is due the rebellion of Lucifer.
Lucifer's Judgment
According to the Bible, at some point in the Earth's history, Lucifer was in control of the planet (Isaiah 14:12-14; Ezekiel 28:11-16; Luke 10:18). Although the Ezekiel passage clearly refers to a literal king in his time of prophecy, it also refers to a king of a different realm than the earthly one. It is likely that Lucifer's Eden was a different place than the garden of Eden of Adam's day. The earthly king of Tyrus could never have walked in Eden because God sealed the entrance when man was thrown out as recorded in Genesis 3:24. The earthly king was never on the holy mount nor was he an anointed cherub. Satan is the only one who this could refer to.
Satan led a rebellion against God, lost, and was cast back down to Earth. This is recorded in the passage in Isaiah and Luke above, which is past tense so it's not referring to his eventual overthrow. I believe God wiped out the planet and left it in a "without form and void" state using a great flood. A description of the earth in this state is seen in Psalms 104:5-9. It is clear that this passage is not a description of Noah's flood since it indicates the waters receded by a rebuke from God (see Genesis 1:9), and in Noah's flood they naturally abated. It is clear that this happened at some point in the past as Satan had already sinned and fallen when Adam and Eve come on the scene.
There was some level of civilization on Earth during at least part of Lucifer's reign as the descriptions of the planet in this "without form and void" state after the judgment of Lucifer's kingdom indicate bird life and buildings were destroyed (Jeremiah 4). The rest of the passage from Jeremiah 4:23-28 matches the state of destruction recorded in Genesis 1 well. While this passage also relates to the surrounding country of Israel, some parts of are clearly a vision of the past. There were no hills moving, or complete removal of bird life, or blackness of the heavens that were likely in Jeremiah's view of what was going on around him, but it does match Genesis 1 .
2 Peter 3 has some additional useful information. This passage traces the full history of the earth. In it, it declares the world (kosmos) perished or was destroyed by a flood depending on the translation. The Greek word kosmos can be translated a few ways. In the primary way it's translated in the Bible it can mean social system or the physical creation. The flood of Noah did not wipe out the social system of Noah as he continued all that was of God after the flood. Likewise, the plants survived, so it wouldn't apply to the physical world either. Noah's flood is the only flood of magnitude directly recorded in scripture, so with the interpretation of Genesis 1:2 relating to Lucifer's first battle for control, the destruction of the kosmos describes Lucifer's flood.
2 Peter 3:12 declares the Earth itself will exist until it burns up one day - "Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat". If the day of the Lord doesn't happen sooner, which is very likely, it will at least eventually happen in 5 billion years when the sun dies out after consuming the inner planets as it goes through its red giant phase, just as described. In about 1 billion years, most of Earth's water will be gone, so the red giant phase won't matter for our descendants anyway. But the Bible does match with what science expects to happen, which is the key point, written when people still thought the universe revolved around the earth and the concept of a flat earth was well established.
There are other interesting things to note about the first part of Genesis. In Genesis 1:2, it states that "darkness was on the face of the deep". The deep is generally a term for a large body of water in the Old Testament and usually the Mediterranean Sea, but considering Psalms 104:5-9 it was extensive. It is possible that Lucifer's kingdom was where the Mediterranean Sea is now, and God permanently flooded it by opening the strait of Gibraltar. This did happen at some point in the past, and it's speculated that it would have produced huge rains all around the basin. Whether this was the extent of the judgment or not is an exercise in thought. The flood could have been much more extensive as well. The scientific record would tend to imply the destruction was more widespread as many of the branches of hominids disappeared at around the same time.
I'd like you to consider the darkness. In Revelation 21:23, 22:5, it says that there is no night or even a need for artificial illumination in heaven because of God's presence. Yet when He is dealing with the earth in Genesis 1:3, the first thing He does is to command that light appear. Clearly, His glory provides light, so why was it not light already?
I feel this is also indicative of judgment, similar to the vial in Revelation 16:10, which, when poured out on the Antichrist's kingdom, plunges it into an intense darkness that is so total as to drive the inhabitants to harm themselves. Darkness had also been present in two earlier judgments in Isaiah 13:6-14; Matthew 24:29-30; Joel 2:30-31, 3:15; Amos 8:9; Acts 2:20; Zephaniah 1:15; Revelation 6:12, 8:12, 9:2 where the sun is dimmed in the first and the smoke of the bottomless pit dims the sun further in the second. There were also the judgments and effects of light and darkness related to Pharaoh as seen in Exodus 10:21-23, 14:19-20 .
So it is just as consistent with the rest of scripture to believe that God's first command of "Let there be light" was a removal of the curse on the planet of God's judgment of Lucifer and his followers. It's also somewhat fitting that this darkness bookends the Bible - at the first and last of the Earth's history - and in each case would be directed at both the Earth and Satan's kingdoms being judged. The light and darkness metaphors in Christianity are telling.
Restoration
The remainder of Genesis 1 then records the restoration of the Earth to a livable state. Ecclesiastes 12:2 also can be referenced noting this time of restoration, as again, the description doesn't fit with Noah's flood. God separates the water back into clouds and that appearing on the surface. He restores dry land again. He creates vegetation, which wasn't needed with Noah's flood since it wasn't destroyed by that shorter duration flood.
He restores the sun's light allowing the sun and moon to shine again either naturally or via reflection in the moon's case. The restoration of their proper function could have been required by a part of the curse He put on Satan's kingdom. It is also possible that as part of the curse, He stopped the earth's rotation leaving one side in even more complete darkness and the other in light and this command restored the natural rotation around the sun and revolution function. Note that in Joshua 10:13, the natural orbit and rotation of the earth was frozen by God to allow Israel to avenge itself on its enemies, so it's something He does when He feels the need. The sun and moon stood still till they were done.
Then He created fish, birds, and animals since they were destroyed in the flood, and finally mankind. The majority of Genesis 1 gives a mix of both creative acts and restorative acts in my view. Some note that a different Hebrew word bara is used for creative acts in Genesis 1:1, and when the flora and fauna are created. The rest of the chapter which uses asah or made. Looking at it this way takes nothing away from God's power, and has many benefits. He is still the Creator, and the life we see today was created at the general time most of Christianity believes it was.
The only facts the Bible isn't completely clear on (in the time frame of the universe it sets out) is when Genesis 1:1 happened, when Lucifer was judged and the Earth cursed to the state seen in Genesis 1:2, and how long Adam and Eve lived in Eden before they sinned and were banished. And, for what it's worth, I do believe that the time periods mentioned for the restorative acts and creative acts of the Genesis 1 story were literal 24 hour days.
Finally, at the end of Genesis 1:28, He commands mankind to replenish the Earth. This is the same command given to Noah in Genesis 9:12. The word replenish means to fill again. The original creation of the Earth is also described in several other scriptures - Proverbs 8:22-31; Colossians 1:15-18 .
Science
I find this interpretation of scripture consistent with the fossil record of the planet. That record has a long line of hominids extending way back with very fragmentary evidence in some cases to almost 7,000,000 years. The species living for the greatest length of time appears to be homo erectus which branches off to homo neanderthalensis, and homo floresiensis quite recently in the geologic scale of things. The time frame for erectus was from approximately 1,800,000 to 130,000 years ago depending on what authority you go by. neanderthalensis and floresiensis were later, from around 350,000 years ago to about 12,000 years ago. At some point around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, homo sapiens came on the scene. It is thought that these coexisted with the others for a period of time.
Then, around 30,000 to 12,000 years ago, all the remaining offshoots died off like a vertical line had been cut across the horizontally branching hominid lines. The only one that continued was homo sapiens sapiens. The non-Christian anthropologists would say that there was no interruption in modern man's line. Christians with my interpretation of Genesis would say that the Bible is correct and that God wiped everything out and then started over again due to Lucifer's rebellion. One thing is certain. All the other surviving variants of hominids were cut off around the same time according to the fossil record a long time before. This would be consistent with a destructive flood in earth's past before Noah's flood as other scriptures record indirectly.
God could have created a completely new flora and fauna when he did his creative work in the post Lucifer restoration of living life, but He could have just as easily created life in harmony with where the planet was before the rebellion that He put down. A scientist would see no break, but the Bible says that there was definitely a break and modern man continued because modern man was restored to the creation as recorded in Genesis.
These time frames fit in nicely with the rest of human history that the Bible presents. It is unclear how long Adam was in the Garden of Eden before they disobeyed God and were driven out. Thus, it is impossible to put a firm date on when this restorative process in the majority of Genesis 1 occurred. Adding up ages of individuals in the Bible, you can place the time of Adam being kicked out of the Garden of Eden to just shy of 6,000 years from present time in rough numbers. How long Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden is not stated.
The account of their lives in the Garden reads like like creation happened, followed by sin, and then boom, kicked out almost immediately. But the Bible never really says how long they were there. It doesn't even tell how long it was before Eve was created to join Adam. It is perfectly possible that this would extend back to the 12 to 30,000 year period. I realize that the Bible notes Adam was 130 years old when Seth was born.
But I believe the fruit of the garden - the tree of life that God cut off their access to - kept them from aging while in the garden so time only started to be counted in years for them once they were evicted. After all, those who survive the tribulation will move into the millennium and will live for at least 1,000 years, providing they don't commit sin at least. So God's flora can do some powerful things for mankind when we have access to it. Those Christians who have already died or are martyred in the tribulation at least get to have a glorified body in the millennial period. Those who survive and enter into it do not.
At any rate, we have no basis to argue with the geologists who date the age of the Earth to approximately 4.54 billion years and put the age of the universe at roughly 13.75 billion years. We don't have any basis to argue with paleontologists over the fossil record. None of these contradict what the Bible says under the above interpretation that provides a earth time frame for Lucifer's kingdom and its destruction by a flood, followed by a creative work to provide the flora and fauna that we see know - at least those species mankind hasn't driven to extinction.
He provided something that was compatible with his final choice of creating mankind in an image similar to His. The fossil record shows many new species coming about over time that are drastically different. God could have had a creative hand here for eons or a natural process like evolution and natural selection could have been going on for millions of years, just as described by the scientists today. It would have come to a screeching halt with Lucifer's judgment, and the creation of what we see today would still have happened if Lucifer's flood was universal which I tend to believe.
None of that takes anything away from God, nor is it an incompatible interpretation with the text of Genesis 1 and other scriptures in the Bible we hold true. God will judge sin in man at the tribulation and beyond, just as He judged sin in man at the time of Noah. To think that His judgment on Lucifer and the angels that rebelled against Him would have been less would be surprising.
Vs. Tradition
This interpretation of Genesis isn't the traditional one Christians believe and it isn't the popular one with most anyone from a traditional religious point of view.. For scientists, it includes a creative God, so it isn't popular with anyone of a strictly scientific point of view either. It comes closest to the "gap" theory, but supposes that there could have been two gaps. The first being between Genesis 1:1-2 and the second, probably much shorter one between Genesis 1:2-3. But the scriptures I've noted don't have a clear explanation other than this - at least to me. In addition, this interpretation eliminates a lot of objections from non-Christians about everything science oriented. Science sees evidence of global floods, although at an older time frame than that of Noah's flood, many caused by the easing of the last ice age. The fossil record doesn't have to be discounted along with accurate dating techniques.
God did create the universe to work in a particular way and unless He steps in to change it like He did when He stopped the clock for a bit to aid Israel's army, it continues to work in the way He established. I'll be the first to admit that dating isn't accurate down to the day, year, decade, or even century when talking about old fossils. But radioactive decay and other means still work the way He set them up. The dating isn't off by huge orders of magnitude either.
There is no debate of when the dinosaurs lived. They have a place in time between the creation of the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1 and the state the earth is described in post judgment in Genesis 1:2. They weren't around snacking on humans before Noah and didn't miss the ark. And you don't have to pretend that Noah's flood somehow reorganized the strata to make it so. Just accept the Bible is true, but maybe what you thought was being recorded in Genesis 1 was different than the easy story you were taught as a child. It fits in better with all God has allowed us to understand and the rest of the Bible accounts.
I'm perfectly comfortable with this understanding of what Genesis 1 records, but if I'm wrong, so be it. I also recognize that God could have created everything just as it exists today, put every part of the physical and electromagnetic spectrum in the right place to appear to have been coming toward our planet for billions of years, made it look like fossils were a few hundred million years old, and everything else just a few thousand years ago as some sort of test.
I'd go so far as to say He could have created everything just before you read this article, and conditioned all our collective minds with a cohesive history to make us believe all the human and religious history we think we know. After all, He raised Lazarus and others from the dead and that would take a lot of body and mind repair. The main reason I discount that is that He said He created everything good, and for us to have been created a few minutes ago, we wouldn't have false religions or people who were not true to Him, or people who didn't believe in any God whatsoever, because that doesn't stack up as good in my mind.
So I really don't think He created everything just a few minutes ago, any more than I believe He created the universe 6,000 years ago. But I do believe that He has the power that He could do that if He chose. I also believe He established the laws of science that the universe operates under and that what we can observe in science today isn't some illusion. You don't have to pretzel it to make the Bible we believe in to be true.
God wants everyone to come to Him and be saved. He didn't create the universe and then provide scripture that He knew would be a huge stumbling block to future generations to keep this from happening. It is man's own interpretation of that scripture in a way that seemed simple and straightforward to the understanding of the universe thousands of years ago that is the stumbling block. But it is a stumbling block of man's creation and tradition. What the Bible says is clear.
Yes, faith in God is needed, but there aren't any additional things you have to disbelieve about what He's created to do that. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The beginning was just as it appears, almost 14 billion years ago for the universe and a 4.54 billion years or so ago for earth.
A young earth creation time frame isn't required by the Bible text, and it doesn't strike me as something God would do. I don't think anyone will be able to say at the great white throne judgment:
"I tried to read your Bible, but you tricked me into believing the Bible couldn't have possibly been true after reading its first chapter because the observable age of the universe doesn't line up with a young earth time frame so I stopped reading and didn't believe anything else I'd heard about what was in it."
Our galaxy is spread out over 30,000 parsecs of space and the observable universe is spread out over 28.5 gigaparsecs. A creation date of 6,000 years ago would not only have had to place each item very, very close to its current position with consistent accelerations. It would have also required the correct placement of every part of the electromagnetic spectrum to allow us to be able to see it today at the distances involved and have an even flow of position through our time as our planet was hit by different parts of that spectrum.
The most distant item observed with parallax, which I use as an example because it is simple trigonometry to generate the distances, is currently a star forming region called W49N. It has a distance of 11.1 kpc +/- .8 kpc (google distance to w49n for more information). That's around 36,000 light years away. You don't have to get into debates on red shift or anything else for this measurement. It's simple trigonometry. Take the angle from earth's observation platforms to W49N on one side of the sun. Wait six months till the earth is on the other side of the sun. The distance between the observation points on Earth over the six monthgs is know, the angles are known. Trigonometry solves for the distance to W49N.
If God didn't create every single bit of electromagnetic spectrum from W49 to us, we wouldn't be able to observe it if God created it 6,000 years ago. In 30,000 years, future generations of humans might see it if humanity lives that long. But it would be invisible to us. The stars we can see in the sky today would literally be popping into our field of vision continually as their light finally reached us reached us if God had only created objects 6,000 years ago without properly creating the whole EM spectrum as well. Could He have created it all 6,000 years ago (objects and EM) so it looked old? Of course He could have. But why would God who wants us to believe in Him place His own stumbling block in the way of our belief?
If you want to believe in a young earth creation date, that's okay. We'll know the truth one day. It is certain that one group is wrong. I like the interpretation of the Bible presented here better, formed from notes by Dake, with a few of my own ideas about light and darkness, and preached by a previous pastor in the church I currently attend - although not the current one who is die-hard AIG.
To me, the interpretation I've presented about what Genesis 1 records and all the other scriptures line up. In it, what God has allowed us to learn of the universe has no conflict with what the Bible says. The young earth interpretation sounds like something the deceiver would propose in order to prevent people from believing in Christianity. He's been pretty successful with the current generation.
I can't present scripture with the technical people I debate today from an "Answers in Genesis" perspective and have any hope of succeeding in making them believers. They may believe if that part is just not discussed at all, and that's great. But when they get hit that "Answers in Genesis" perspective when they ask, they'll start to doubt everything else more often than not. That is especially true if they haven't yet seen God's power in action for themselves. Fortunately, I think the traditional YEC interpretation of Genesis 1 is wrong but the Bible is correct with respect to what it says about creation. I can present what I and a few others believe instead when the topic comes up. Getting past the knots man tries to warp Genesis 1 in to say everything was created 6,000 years ago opens up conversations that would otherwise be completely closed. And it eliminates the need to follow the pretzel of science of a few which are actively objected to by the rest of science to try to make that believable.
I'll add one other idea to think about. How much of the trying to stick with a young earth date is simply because eternity is a really tough concept to accept when our life spans rarely reach past a century. I think part of the reason the classical interpretation is so widely held is that man has trouble accepting an eternal God. We can barely wrap our mind's around a God who might be a few thousand years old, but thinking of Him being billions of years old or eternal is just too much. But it really isn't. And heaven and hell will be forever, just like God. And we will have our own eternal lives to live as well... in one destination or another.
I'll join Galileo and Copernicus in trying to change classical views to fit what science now observes. Science doesn't conflict with a proper understanding of the Bible. It really can't, because God laid out all its workings. What we observe in the world today is different than what our ancestors believed. The Earth isn't the center of the universe. The Earth orbits the Sun instead of the Sun orbiting the Earth. The flat earth people have about given up, although there are still some hangers on. Newton's ideas on gravity has been replaced by Einstein's theories of general relativity, although the scientists are still working on a complete understanding of it. And quantum theory blows away a bunch of ideas people had in the past. DNA, genetics and the human genome, anatomy, and the function of the body have drastically advanced over time as well. Although there is still much more to learn and understand our knowledge is growing, with help from scientists of all types - Christian and non-Christian. And yet God still knows and understands all.
What's Most Important
If God tarries, I'm not sure where the knowledge vs. Bible arguments will go. I'm sure there will still be some. Maybe, we'll still be having this same one. Or maybe, like big changes in the religious perspective over time, our great, great, great grandchildren will experience the church syncing back up to science again. When that happens, I truly believe that the Bible itself won't need changing. What it has claimed to be true will still be true. But our understanding or acceptance of what the verses are telling us will have changed.
Always remember these most important facts. The purpose of the Bible's Old Testament is to tell people enough history about the Jewish people and provide enough prophecies to identify Christ and the need for His divine sacrifice. It is also used to show that mankind, by its very nature, is sinful and needs a sacrifice for that sin to reconcile themselves with God. In the Old Testament, that sacrifice was the repeated blood of animal sacrifices. Christ came to provide the perfect sacrifice that would save us and set us free by the power of the Holy Spirit from sin.
The New Testament is designed to record some of the history of Christ's life and of the early church. This is done to help us know how to live under the new covenant that Christ made. It ends with a prophecy of what is to come after Christ returns for His church, with other prophecies about this time spread throughout Daniel and some of the minor prophets.
The Bible's purpose is not to teach anthropology through the ages. That it fits in with many anthropological claims is to be expected. God's word is truth. Having an explanation of Creation that seems to fit with all of scripture and science takes the wind out of the sails of those who say the Bible is false. This isn't a bad thing. There are more important things to talk to people about when it comes to Scripture.