Why this book? Three reasons:
Preview of Book 2
Chapter 1 – Getting Started
First, to show a very tiny glimpse of What and Who God is in order to glorify God.
Second, to show that God’s creation is the second greatest witnessing tool there is; second only to the Scriptures themselves.
Third, to show that the universe probably is 13.8 billion years old, as we commonly understand years and time.
You think “time” is a simple subject? When I typed in “What is time?” in my web browser, I got over 5 billion hits. If it’s difficult to understand time, can you imagine how confusing eternity can be?
In a nutshell, the purpose of this book is to help you worship; to help you witness.
Chapter 2 – How Powerful is Your God?
(Just to help you get a tiny glimpse of the knowledge, wisdom, and power of our God.)
Question: Do you remember, from your high school science class, what the magnetic field around the Earth looks like?
If you said one field that covers the entire Earth, with a north pole and a south pole, you would be right.
But the Sun’s magnetic field is not nearly as simple as the Earth’s. The Sun has many magnetic fields that are created in the outer third of the Sun as it churns up and down in huge convective currents. These local magnetic fields give off a constant stream of electrons and protons called the solar wind.
Below NASA’s YouTube video on Thermonuclear Art is written, “It’s always shining, always ablaze with light and energy that drive weather, biology and more. In addition to keeping life alive on Earth, the sun also sends out a constant flow of particles called the solar wind, and it occasionally erupts with giant clouds of solar material, called coronal mass ejections, or explosions of X-rays called solar flares. These events can rattle our space environment out to the very edges of our solar system. In space, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, keeps an eye on our nearest star 24/7. SDO captures images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. In this video, we experience SDO images of the sun in unprecedented detail. Presented in ultra-high definition, the video presents the dance of the ultra-hot material on our life-giving star in extraordinary detail, offering an intimate view of the grand forces of the solar system.”
I hope after reading this book you will have a little better layman’s understanding of how God brought what we call the known universe into existence. Once you get a feel for God’s work of Creation, I think you may also see that your concept of the universe, and therefore your view of God, may be WAY too small. “I am the Lord, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself…. I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.” (Isaiah 44:24b, 6b)
I also hope that after reading this book you will get a glimpse of the infinite glory, power, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and love of the only true God. The God of the Christian Bible. To help achieve all this, I have included photographs of what I believe to be some of the most beautiful sights in all of God’s creation; photographs of the heavens above.
Many of these photos were sent back by the Hubble Space telescope shown here in low Earth orbit, about 380 miles above planet Earth. See here what Hubble was doing on its 30th anniversary in space. (Hubble will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope.)
The photos that follow are of galaxies, nebulae, supernova explosions, and other exotic works by the One Who “spread out the heavens.” All of the things pictured are so far from Earth that the distances are measured in special units, called light-years, rather than miles.
Chapter 3 – A Little History
Has the age of the universe always been a big issue?
No.
Why then, has the age of the universe become so controversial in recent years?
In the beginning, the early church fathers had much to say about the opening chapters of Genesis, but it was NOT something that divided the church as it has today.
But, then in 1650, six years before his death, James Ussher, scholar and Archbishop of the Church of Ireland, calculated that the universe was created “on the beginning of the night which preceded the 23rd of October,” 4004 B.C. Ussher arrived at that specific date because he believed:
First, that the days in Genesis, chapter 1 were six, 24-hour days.
Second, that the Biblical genealogies are complete, i.e., no one was omitted.
Old Earth creationists would disagree with the first premise, and many creationists of all stripes would disagree with the second premise. As B.B. Warfield once said, “The general fact that the genealogies of Scripture were not constructed for a chronological purpose and lend themselves ill to employment as a basis for chronological calculations has been repeatedly shown very fully… .”
From the 18th century onward, Ussher’s date for creation, along with Ussher’s dates for other historical Biblical events, were all included in the King James Version of the Bible and assumed by many to be “the gospel.” I must admit that I haven’t picked up a King James Version of the Bible in many years. So, I don’t know if those dates are still being printed in there or not.
Then, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, scientists began finding fossils of once-living things in rocks that indicated that the Earth was old, much older than the 6,000 years assumed by many Christians at that time.
Not long after that, French and German theologians started openly attacking the veracity of the Bible with their higher criticism.
Many faithful Christians started feeling threatened by science on one side and liberal theologians on the other.
Then in 1857, British biologist and Pastor Philip Gosse tried to defuse the rapidly growing problem by publishing a book that suggested that the Earth was really very young, but that God had created the universe with the appearance of age.
Chapter 4 – What Day is it anyway?
Now, the question is, how can we find the truth about the age of the universe, that will, as it says in the Scriptures, “…set us free” (John 8:32)?
I believe the best way to go about this is by looking at the two revelations (part 2) that God has given us. (Note: I use the terms general revelation and natural revelation interchangeably.)
Remember, from the beginning, God gave all humanity general revelation, or as I like to refer to it, natural (from nature) revelation. Natural revelation is formally studied today by scientists when they study nature. Those scientists that don’t believe in God don’t know that they are studying God’s natural revelation, but God has, and is, using scientists from around the world to bring glory to Himself through the study of His revelation in nature every day.
More recently, God has given us special revelation. Special revelation is God’s revelation to us through the Scriptures.
As Christians, we believe that both revelations are equally inerrant; since both revelations are from God, and God cannot lie or change His mind as the Bible makes very clear in many places.
But both revelations have their limitations in that neither speaks to all possible subjects and unfortunately, both are subject to interpretation by fallen man and therefore susceptible to erroneous interpretation and conclusions from time to time.
As a side note, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI 1977 – 1987) had no problem with either the young Earth or old Earth views. Their only concern was that Christians understand that the creation event did take place at a definite time in the past. And this, by the way, is both the Biblical and scientific view.
The defining difference between believers and non-believers is that Christians believe the creation event was as a result of the will and act of our sovereign God; whereas the atheistic wing of science would say that it was without cause, design, or reason, merely a random “quantum mechanical fluctuation” from nothing.
So, what does the Bible, God’s special revelation, say about how long it took God to create the universe?
This is a no-brainer, even for me! The Bible clearly and unmistakably says it took God six days to create the heavens and the Earth, and then God took a day off.
Shouldn’t that be the end of the discussion?
Absolutely! God said it, and it really doesn’t matter what I think. If God said it, then it has to be completely and forever true, final and unchangeable.
The only little question that remains is, what does the Bible mean by the word, “day”?
Chapter 5 – Cosmology 101
Okay, so where do we stand at this point?
Young Earth creationists say the entire universe is less than 10,000 years old. Old Earth creationists say it’s about 13.8 billion years old. Special revelation says, maybe it could be either, depending on how you define yom. So maybe this would be a good time to see what God’s natural revelation has to say on the subject.
Now, we are getting to the really good stuff; what I call cosmology 101. For the next few pages, I would like to define, on a very elementary level, some of the major subjects covered in the study of cosmology for two reasons. First, so you will have a better understanding of what scientists believe and why they believe it so strongly. Why the atheistic scientists’ confidence in science’s ability to eventually understand and control all things is just as strong as my confidence that the God of the Christian Bible is the creator and controller of all things. And second, to help us better understand the God behind the cosmology.
As we discuss what science has learned about God’s creation from His natural revelation, if you are really thinking, you will better understand God’s power, God’s knowledge, God’s wisdom, and God’s infinite awesomeness.
And before we even get started, what in the world is cosmology?
Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and composition of the known universe. The people that do research in cosmology are not cosmetologists. Cosmetologists are people that do hairstyling and other beautification treatments. People that work in cosmology are generally physicists, astrophysicists, or astronomers.
Some amateur cosmologists are just has been pilots that have nothing better to do than try to understand how God formed this amazingly beautiful and complex universe that we live in. By studying cosmology, we can get a very tiny glimpse into the infinite mind of our creator God. And in my tiny little mind, nothing outside of the Scriptures themselves glorifies God more than the cosmos. I believe one of the reasons why God created the cosmos the way it is was to reveal to us, as best we can understand, His infinite wisdom and power. I think I am repeating myself again. But for good reason!
What is physics? Physics is that branch of science that deals with the properties and interactions of matter, energy, forces, and motion. Or, to keep it simple, let’s define physics as the study of the most basic structure of things. Things we can see with the naked eye, or with the help of microscopes and telescopes. Things we can measure; things that have some type of physical existence in reality. And more recently, things we can only think about in our minds like the vibrating strings in string theory and virtual particles that seem to pop into and out of existence.
Chapter 6 – What Do the Scientists Believe About the Age of the Universe?
Now that you have all aced cosmology 101 and are qualified amateur cosmologists, you are ready to hear what 21st-century scientists have to say about the age of the universe. Or, more accurately, you are ready to take a very small look into the glory and majesty of God’s natural revelation. But, to understand what scientists believe today about the origin and nature of the universe, we need to begin with what scientists believed at the beginning of the last century.
To western scientists in 1900, the general consensus was that the universe was infinitely old and infinitely large. And some scientists believed that up to as recently as 1965. Our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, they believed, was a small “island universe,” surrounded by an infinity of nothingness. This is generally referred to as the “steady-state theory.”
Atheistic scientists loved the steady-state theory, because if it was true, then among other things evolution would have had an infinite amount of time to do what atheistic evolutionists think evolution did without God. And, the steady-state theory gave non-believers a plausible explanation for the universe, without the need for any kind of God to have created it.
Needless to say, there were many scientists from around the world that were involved with the painstaking research that was required to arrive at what we know today about the universe. As it says in Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”
I would like to briefly highlight a very few of the events and people that have searched out the matter of the creation and evolution of the universe that were most interesting to me.
Just a quick historical footnote, General Relativity was NOT proven until May 29th, 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington confirmed Einstein’s theory and made Einstein world-famous. General Relativity included what is referred to as Einstein’s Field Equations (EFE). Einstein’s field equations are a set of 10 equations within Einstein’s general theory of relativity that describe gravity in terms of space and time. General Relativity can be summed up in two simple statements: (well, simple if you have a Ph.D. in know-it-ology) (1) Matter and energy causes spacetime to curve. And (2) In the absence of forces, objects move in the straightest possible paths in curved spacetime. But that’s not all. His equations also predicted an expanding universe. And it would be appropriate to say that when these equations came out, all hell broke loose in the scientific community.
Chapter 7 – All Hell Broke Loose!
Even Einstein was so shaken by his discovery that he introduced a constant into his equations that would eliminate the requirement for an expanding universe. In later years, he would call his introduction of an unnecessary constant the biggest blunder he ever made.
Please note that Einstein’s Field Equations, and the expanding universe that his equations predicted, were probably one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. Concerning the expanding universe, physicist Dr. Neil Tyson said during the May 2015 NOVA Space Documentary Mysteries of the Universe, “This is a discovery for the ages.” But this discovery was especially important for Christians. It was a theological time bomb that scientists immediately recognized, and therefore, immediately rejected. Christians at that time were either asleep or thought, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” If Einstein was right, then all of science was wrong about the universe being infinitely large and infinitely old. Wrong about there being an infinite amount of time for atheistic evolution to take place. And most importantly, wrong about the existence of God.
Friends, do I have your attention? Did you comprehend what I just said?
Chapter 8 – What About the Appearance of Age Theory?
Okay, we are finally ready to address the appearance of age theory.
Remember, I said we would get back to that! “Sure,” you may say, “maybe the scientists do have reason to believe in a hot, inflationary, Biblical Big Bang, but it just appears that way, because God made the universe with the appearance of age.”
The Mice: Colliding Galaxies with Tails of Stars and Gas – NGC 4676 NASA
This may come as a surprise, but Philip Goose’s “appearance of age” theory, although “widely reviewed, it was nonetheless universally condemned by both Christians and evolutionists alike” (see page 4). The Christian community rejected the appearance of age theory at that time because it was contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture and made God out to be the ultimate deceiver. And that was totally repulsive to Christians, at least at that time.
How you may ask, is this contrary to Scripture, and how does it make God out to be the ultimate deceiver? Two examples from Scripture:
First, Psalms 19:1-4, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
How does it glorify God to deceive the people, who spend their lives studying the heavens and the Earth, into believing that the universe is older than it really is?
If God is deceiving us about the age of the heavens, what else is He deceiving us about?
If God is deceiving us about the age of the heavens, how can we be sure that He is NOT deceiving us about: Who Jesus is? That Jesus paid for our sins? That there is life after death?
Second example, Romans 1:18-20: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.”
Now you ask, “How did God make Himself known to Godless men?” Read on.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been MADE, so that men are without excuse.”
Chapter 9 – What Do Some Other Mature Christians Think?
I think it appropriate to ask at this point, who are some other mature, scholarly, Christians that believe that yom should be interpreted as a long period of time? I’ll just mention a few.
Charles Hodge, (1797 – 1878), wrote in Volume 1 of his three-volume Systematic Theology, pages 570 – 571, “It is of course admitted that, taking this account (in Genesis) by itself, it would be most natural to understand the word (yom/day) in its ordinary sense (24 hours); but if that sense brings the Mosaic account into conflict with facts, and another sense avoids such conflict, then it is obligatory on us to adopt the other (long period of time). Now it is urged that if the word ‘day’ be taken in the sense of ‘an indefinite period of time’ a sense which it undoubtedly has in other parts of Scripture, there is not only no discrepancy between the Mosaic account of the creation and the assumed facts of geology, but there is a most marvelous coincidence between them.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 – 1892) in his sermon number 30 to the New Park Street Chapel in 1855 concerning The power of the Holy Ghost, Pastor Spurgeon said, “In the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God.”
(Like to read more of Pastor Spurgeon’s sermons?
Chapter 10 – What Most Glorifies God?
Earlier I said that what you believe about the creation of the universe will have a big influence on how you present the Christian worldview to your lost friends and possibly your concept of God; here’s why.
Especially for people living in the 21st century, it is science that can point all non-believers to the reality and glory of the one, true God (Romans 1: 18-20). If Christians can show the lost world the indisputable link between cosmology and Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit can take it from there. But this is only possible if you hold to an old Earth, Biblical/scientific view of creation.
If you hold to an old Earth view of creation, you have a solid argument, outside of the Scriptures, where ALL lost souls are coming from, for the existence of a god. Because if there is NO god, then there is NO solid basis for how something can come from nothing. Vacuum energy, or a quantum fluctuation, or mass density fluctuations, or gravity, or my favorite by Dr. Krauss, “a bubbling brew of virtual particles” does NOT define a First Cause for the universe, and certainly NOT for life itself!
As Christians we know of the accuracy of the Scriptures on topics such as geography, history, and ethics; with an old Earth view of creation, we can claim Scriptures’ proven accuracy concerning science which in itself has never, and will never, save anyone from hell. But it removes modern humankind’s major excuse for NOT believing in the Scriptures that hold the key to eternal life. We would do well, as messengers sent from God, to use science to open the door for the Holy Spirit to do what ONLY the Holy Spirit can do, that is, to change hearts of stone to hearts of flesh.
Appendix A
During the second Question and Answer period at the Ligonier Ministries 2012 National Conference, the speakers were asked about the age of the universe. Please click on this link to hear Dr. Sproul’s reasonable, rational, and loving reply.
Appendix B
Before we focus on Dr. Douglas F. Kelly’s book, let’s begin with the ABCs of the debate between the young Earth Christians and old Earth Christians, since it applies to every young Earth book I have ever read.
A. One of the things that I hear from my young Earth friends is that they are interpreting the creation account literally. But guess what? In my day, when I first read Genesis one and two, (and the rest of the Bible) I interpreted it literally too! And when I did, I come up with an old Earth/universe! By the way, when you just read above, “In my day…” did you interpret “day” as 24-hours or some longer period of time? Certainly, you interpreted it as some longer period of time because of the context.
B. And speaking of context, to whom was the book of Genesis written? I would say first for the people of Israel that Moses was leading to the Promised Land; and second everyone else that would come after them. Now if Moses had written, “In the beginning, from nothing, God created the Singularity, and from the Singularity came all mass, energy, space, and time,” no one would have had a clue what Moses was talking about for another 3,300 years! But the way Moses did write it, the primary meaning has been understood for the last 3,300 years. In other words, the Scriptures are “living and active.” It’s called progressive revelation, (NOT to be confused with progressive Christianity). In the same way, Moses gave us hints of our Savior Jesus that was to come. But it was 1,300 years later before Jesus was revealed to us “in the fullness of time”!!! That’s progressive revelation.
Appendix C
2010 National Conference – Ligonier Ministries Dr. Albert Mohler Why Does the Universe Look So Old?
Some things to think about.
1. Keep in mind that Dr. Mohler gave this presentation in 2010. I have NO idea if he would say the same today. More than likely, he has NOT changed his mind on the age of the universe, but he may have changed his mind, one way or the other, on specific things that he said. I am sure that I have said things in 2010 that I would change today if I could.
2. Early in his presentation Dr. Mohler said something that I totally agree with. He said, “Or there may be some who would say the question (concerning the age of the Earth) isn’t important. But I’m going to suggest to you this morning that the question is extremely important, and that it is one for which we must be ready to give an answer.”
It’s a matter of perspective.
Hubble image of variable star RS Puppis