What is young earth creationism and why is it important? - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 49

GotQuestions.org

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:10

Welcome to the

00:25

GodQuestions Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be discussing creationism, and specifically,

00:31

Younger's Creationism. And with that in mind, our guest today is Eric Hovind. He's the president of Creation Today.

00:38

And Eric and I are good friends. We've met several times and had some really good discussions, so I couldn't think of anyone else

00:47

I'd rather have on to discuss this topic today. So Eric, welcome to the show. Man, Shea, thank you so much, dude.

00:54

I love what you guys do. So hanging out with you again is absolutely a blast. So Eric, for our listeners who may not be familiar with the ministry that God's given you, what is

01:05

Creation Today? Well, Creation Today is a non -profit that just wants to help people understand the truth about science and scripture and how they are not at odds.

01:15

You can actually understand the truth of the Bible and the truth of science and understand it in a simple way that helps you understand that God is who

01:22

He says He is and that we need to trust in Jesus Christ, the only way for salvation. So really using the science and bringing it to scripture, helping people understand

01:31

God's Word and God's world in a bigger way. So that's an excellent overview of the ministry.

01:37

What are some of the specific things? How do you specifically accomplish some of the things you just described?

01:43

We are willing to do anything. I go to universities, I'll be leaving next Saturday to head down to three different universities in Central Florida, and we'll do tabling events there, and I'll typically have a banner that says something like,

01:56

God created the heavens and the earth, prove me wrong. And we have two chairs, and I'm in one, and we invite students to come up and sit in there.

02:02

We produce a show, the Creation Today show, and host a live event every Wednesday at noon

02:08

Central Time at creationtoday .org slash live, where we're bringing in, kind of like what you're doing, bringing in experts and having these great conversations and encouraging people to learn and know why they believe what they believe, because the reason gotquestions .org

02:24

exists, biblical illiteracy is huge. We need to understand the answers to today's questions.

02:30

So between the website, traveling and speaking, going to churches, going to universities, going to schools, putting out content online, trying to reach the social media crowd, we stay busy with any way we see that can be effective in communicating the truth of the gospel to people.

02:49

So yeah, we'll do anything, man. All right. Good to know. I might hit you up on one of those one of these days.

02:55

So let's do it. One thing I really wanted to communicate with this episode is that gotquestions .org

03:02

is a young earth creationist ministry, that we believe that a plain reading of Scripture leads to that conclusion, whether it's just the

03:10

Genesis chapter 2, morning and evening clearly is describing a literal earth day, or even in the

03:18

Ten Commandments, that in six days God created the heavens and the earth. So we believe, again, a plain reading of Scripture leads to conclusion that God created the earth thousands of years ago, rather than what we're typically told by the science community millions and or billions of years ago.

03:34

But that's not really the purpose of today's episode. Maybe I will have Eric on again sometime soon, where he can give us some really good evidence for why he believes, aside from Scripture, that the earth is in fact thousands of years old rather than billions.

03:48

But today I wanted to talk about more the importance of this issue. So Eric, why would you say, why does young earth creationism matter?

03:58

Why is it important? Well, let me start by saying, Shea, I'm so glad that gotquestions .org does take a stand on this.

04:05

There's a lot of churches that see the controversy out there and they don't. And I have been referring people to gotquestions .org

04:13

for years and years and years. The resources that you guys have, the answers that you guys have are nothing short of amazing.

04:20

So I'm just, I'm so glad you guys had the vision to do what you did and that you're taking the stand that you do consistently with a practical understanding of the

04:31

Bible, a literal real understanding of what God's word is. And you're sharing that with others unashamedly.

04:40

So that to me in this ministry, that's like a huge wow factor. It's like, man, you're really doing it.

04:46

So thank you for taking that stand. So why does it matter? By the way, if you don't know, there's a debate out there over young earth creation.

04:55

It's also referred to as biblical creation and old earth creation. So big picture, there's basically two worldviews and you get to pick which one you believe.

05:06

You got the creation worldview that says God created the heavens and the earth. And then you've got an evolutionary worldview or materialist or naturalistic worldview.

05:15

There's really no God evolution somehow created everything. Theologians began saying, well, oh no, if scientists are saying the earth is old, how do we fit that into the

05:25

Bible? And so Thomas Chalmers 1804 was one of the first theologians that invented something called the gap theory.

05:34

And they had historically believed young earth creation gap theory comes in later on. Somebody says, well, maybe every day of creation isn't really a day.

05:42

Maybe it's a long period of time. And then you had what's called progressive creation. Maybe God created progressively over time.

05:49

Then some people, once Darwin's evolution theory came along, said, well, maybe God used evolution. Maybe that's how

05:54

God created us. And then of course, the majority of scientists took it and said, well, I don't think we even need

06:00

God anymore and adopted atheist evolution. So back to the big question, why does this matter?

06:06

Well, it matters because the one who created the universe recorded for us what happened.

06:14

And he recorded it for us in the best possible way. You can record something. He wrote it down.

06:20

I mean, if you want to communicate something, do it clearly. You write it down. And that's exactly what he did. And so I'm really glad the creator of the universe wrote down what happened so we would never get confused about the subject.

06:32

He recorded how long ago it went. He gives us the timeline of events. He gives us the genealogies. And here's why it's important, because Jesus says he came and died the death of the cross.

06:43

New Testament. Why did he die the death of the cross? To save mankind from the curse of sin.

06:53

Where do we hear about sin? Well, that we find in the very beginning of Genesis. If you don't have a real

07:00

Adam and Eve, a real sin problem, why do we need a real Jesus? I mean, if sin isn't really a problem, if Adam and Eve didn't really sin and bring death and suffering into God's perfect world, then why do we really need a savior to save us from that?

07:15

Think of it like this. If God originally created the world filled with death and suffering, then what is he really saving us from?

07:23

What are all those prophecies in the prophets of the Old Testament, even in the

07:28

New Testament, where it says, man, God's going to make this world back to the way it was in the Garden of Eden. It's going to be perfect again.

07:35

Is that a perfect world that includes lots of death and suffering and animals eating animals and cancer and disease?

07:42

So what you find out is the older, the younger debate, it ends up being a gospel issue.

07:51

It ends up asking, you end up asking the question, well, why did Jesus even come? So here's the way

07:56

I put it, like in a tweet, if I were going to tweet this out, I'd say, the age of the earth is not essential to salvation, but it is essential to the doctrine that gets you salvation, the idea of sin, death, and suffering.

08:13

So why is it actually important? Because the gospel, the very reason

08:19

Jesus's earthly life was made necessary is based on the fall in Genesis, the truth of Genesis being real.

08:28

And that doesn't even get into the fact that, well, as a Christian, if you want to be a

08:34

Christian, why does it matter? Because you're following Jesus Christ. And when you study what Jesus Christ said about Genesis, you go, well, he took it very literally.

08:43

He took it absolutely as fact, like it really happened, talked about Adam and Eve. So why is it important?

08:50

Ultimately, it does become a gospel issue. The doctrine of salvation is affected by this.

08:57

Yeah, I totally get that. I mean, without a literal Adam and Eve, there's no need for a literal

09:03

Savior for sin. And much of what you said, same arguments I would make if someone were to ask me that question.

09:09

Now, one of my struggles is I do have several good friends who are Old Earth Creationists, and I have absolutely no doubt that they know the

09:19

Lord, that they're trusting in Christ the Savior. And I no doubt, as much as you can not doubt the salvation of another individual where you can't truly know their heart, that these men and women know

09:30

Christ and are saved, and I will joyfully spend eternity with them. And they just don't see a literal interpretation of Genesis as being crucial to this.

09:41

They believe that you can get from billions of years to a literal creation of Adam and Eve, and then the rest of the biblical story picks up from there, and we don't have any major problems.

09:53

How do you respond to Old Earth Creationists who, other than the young Earth viewpoint, might interpret the

10:03

Bible either exactly the same or pretty much the same as we would?

10:10

First of all, I agree. I've got a lot of great friends. I've actually, if I called this person's name, everybody out there would know this gentleman.

10:19

I was on the phone with him, and I said, okay, Old Earth Creationist, I said, exactly how old

10:25

Earth are you? He said, well, let me put it this way. I'm not as old

10:30

Earth as you are young Earth. And I went, well, I'm glad to hear that, because you're hanging on to some interpretations of science that I think if the church would have corrected this back when

10:44

Old Earth Creation and things like this were becoming popular, they would have quelched it.

10:50

Paul writes to Timothy in, I believe it's 1 Timothy 6, verse 20, he says, avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions to science falsely so called.

11:01

And I think what we're up against is a false science. So all science has to be interpreted.

11:08

I'm getting to what I would say to my friends and what I do say to them. But all science has to be interpreted. So when we look at the layers to the

11:14

Earth, how do we interpret them? Some people look at those layers and say millions of years. I look at the same evidence and say global flood.

11:21

I also look at the facts inside of the layers, the layers where the tree is connecting the many different layers called polystrata or polystrate fossils.

11:30

That tree could not have stood there for thousands or millions of years, the difference in age of those layers, while the sediment formed around it.

11:36

So I find all this science that I go, man, this confirms the Bible. So when I'm talking to somebody, one of my friends, or even somebody at a church that will often talk to me and say, man, listen,

11:46

I got to tell you, I think science is kind of proven in Old Earth and they'll use, you know, carbon dating or the geologic column or starlight in time.

11:53

They got all these different things that they use. I go, I don't think that that really presents what you think it presents.

11:59

When you actually look at the science and interpret it correctly, you come to a very different conclusion.

12:06

So what would I say to one of my Old Earth friends from the Bible? I'd come from the

12:12

Bible first and say, listen, you agree with the Bible? You say, and most of them do say, they say, we want biblical authority.

12:18

This is the authority. And I say, okay, well, if this is our authority, what do we do with the fact that God does clearly say he made it in six days and rested on the seventh.

12:28

And that's, that's not ambiguous in Genesis or in any of the other many places

12:34

God talks about the seventh day. Hebrews talks about the seventh day. Jesus says

12:39

Adam and Eve were made at the beginning. He's telling the story of, he's like kind of getting onto the scribes and Pharisees and he says, you know, what's that passage where he's like, it's going to be held against this generation.

12:53

And he says from the, from the foundation of the world, it's going to be held. This generation is accountable basically for not recognizing the

13:01

Messiah. And he says from the blood of Abel. So Cain and Adam and Eve had

13:07

Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel, Abel was the first martyr. And it's talking about martyrs. And it says from the blood of Abel all the way up to the blood of Zacharias.

13:15

And it's, it relates the blood of Abel to the foundation of the world, not the foundation of the, of the, of humanity, but the foundation of the cosmos, the very beginning of life.

13:27

So I'd take it from a biblical approach and say, Jesus very clearly believed that Genesis was literal history.

13:34

And he based all of his teaching on that. His doctrine was based on that. Matter of fact, every doctrine in the

13:39

Bible goes back to a real Genesis, a real creation account. I can,

13:45

I can see your, your passion for it. And that's, that's, I get excited about these sorts of things too. But one of my questions would be, is that I think we can agree that many of the old earth creationists, people who will even argue that point strongly, are still, or at least can be our brothers and sisters in Christ.

14:05

This is not a issue that prevents them from trusting in Jesus Christ as the Savior. Obviously there are some theological problems if you truly dig into it, but, but to what extent do you see, can old earth creationists and young earth creationists either cooperate or partner together in ministry in the sense that we do agree that God created, um, just don't necessarily agree how long it took or how he created, or even setting aside, um, creationism.

14:36

There are a lot of, some of the best apologists out there for defending the existence of God, the resurrection of Christ, other issues that we wholeheartedly agree with them on are also old earth.

14:47

So at what point do we need to separate versus them versus partner with them?

14:54

How do you approach that as the leader of a young earth creationist ministry? It's a, it's honestly, it's a challenge for me because I'm trying to walk a really fine line in what

15:07

I present, yet, uh, I've seen guys on your podcast, uh, friends that, that I would, people that I would call friends,

15:13

Frank Turk, uh, Greg Coco, you know, his book tactics is amazing on evangelism. These guys have incredible ministries on teaching apologetics, but yet we would totally disagree on young earth, old earth debates on that issue.

15:27

Um, I'm glad we're friends. I'm glad we're on the same side. I remember interviewing Hugh Ross, who is a huge proponent, proponent of old earth creationism.

15:37

And I get all the way down with my interview and I just, I'm kind of like, Hey, what do we do about this? How do we, how do we, you know, we differ.

15:43

We disagree. I, man, I can't, I can't fathom the, the, the hoops you have to jump through hermeneutically to get where you get when you say these things that you say about these

15:52

Bible passages. I'm like, man, it just, but at the end of that I said, Hey Hugh, what's the gospel?

15:58

And he shared a beautiful gospel presentation that was based on man's sinning and bringing death into God's perfect creation.

16:07

And I went, well, I don't think your theology and I don't think your science can get you to that spot, but I think that what you're saying is exactly right.

16:16

Jesus is the cure for the sin problem that's in the world. He's the only way there's no other way.

16:23

And all of those guys would agree. They would admit, they would say, well, if, if there was another way, why did

16:32

God send Christ to die the cruel death of the cross? I mean, does that make any sense? Hey, there's a whole lot of ways, but you know what,

16:39

I'm going to have you go die as one more way. That wouldn't make any sense. And all of them would agree with that.

16:45

So what, what, what I would do is I would, I'd be happy to, I'd share a stage with most of them.

16:51

I would, I would talk with them. I'd fellowship with them. I'd, I'd make a distinction. I'd show that,

16:57

Hey, you know, while there's a lot of great answers here, here's where I'm at. I partner with, with GotQuestions on where I send people with our little search creation website.

17:07

I partner with you guys because I know they're going to get the right answer on everything and they don't have to create those, those loopholes in their hermeneutics.

17:15

But I love them. I think, I think for the most part, God is going to use everybody as part of his body and some people he's, he's going to be like, yeah,

17:23

I'm having, I'm using you for this reason. He's using, he's using sin for his glory.

17:29

He's using the people that are, that are hypocrites, that are false prophets. And he's saying,

17:34

I'll get the glory for that. I trust God will get the glory for everybody and what they teach.

17:39

I just want to make sure I'm trying to teach the right thing and hold to what God's word says. Yeah. I'm with you there.

17:46

And like several of our recent guests have been, Old Earth Creationism, that was not the topic we're discussing, but even on Got Questions, we have an article of what is

17:59

Old Earth Creationism. And I actually allowed a Old Earth Creationist to write it because I didn't want a, we have plenty of articles that argue for Young Earth Creationism, that argue even against Old Earth, but I wanted a, what is article to present.

18:13

Here is from an Old Earth Creationist, why I believe this with a course with a little,

18:20

I don't know, a warning or a disclaimer saying, we present this article this way because we want you to go back, study

18:28

God's word to examine whether these things are true and to actually look at this issue again, because most of the time people are only presented opposing viewpoints with the sole purpose of refuting it rather than, huh, really thinking it through.

18:45

Okay, I disagree with you, but now I have a great understanding of why both

18:51

I disagree with that view and hold to this particular view. And just to be granted, we've gotten some aggressive feedback on some of that.

19:00

And I mean, Got Questions, again, like I said at the beginning, we are a ministry that believes in Young Earth Creationism because we believe that is the plain teaching of scripture.

19:11

But unlike creation today, we are not just a Young Earth Creationism, that is, we take a particular view on the end times, but we're not only a ministry that specializes in that, we're a ministry that asks us anything about the

19:25

Bible and we will strive to give you a solid biblically based answer. So to us, it seems like our strategy is, here's what we believe the truth is, but part of our goal is to get people to study

19:38

God's word for themselves and not just to always come to us or to someone else to get the answer.

19:43

We want people to know how to study God's word for themselves and find these answers. So when we present a viewpoint on some of these more controversial issues, we try to approach it with the spirit of grace, knowing that while I'm pretty firm in believing the

20:00

Bible teaches this, I do recognize you don't have to hold this to be a believer. And I at least understand why some people might hold a different viewpoint.

20:11

Now, maybe my last question for you on this episode is, again, I'd love to come have you back on and discuss maybe a little more scientific arguments for Young Earth and against Old Earth.

20:22

But just for this episode, the tone of I really want to keep it focused on, why does it seem going both ways, brothers and sisters in Christ, both on the

20:34

Young Earth and older side, why is there such hostility? Again, I don't know if hostility is even a strong enough word, vitriol almost to the point of questioning each other's faith, insults back and forth, and just to the point that's like, why are we doing this when on the essentials of the gospel and other core doctrines of the faith, we agree.

20:59

In your experience, what do you think are the main reasons why some on both sides of the argument go that route?

21:07

Well, I certainly see and I certainly can appreciate,

21:14

I truly can appreciate why the two different sides are so passionate.

21:19

I think of a William Lane Craig on the Old Earth side. He would look at Young Earth creationists and rather than just say,

21:28

I disagree, he would say, you guys are embarrassing us. This is intellectual embarrassment.

21:36

Science is proven in Old Earth. We can fit the Old Earth into the Bible. It's not a problem.

21:42

Stop embarrassing us. And he really would passionately say, he said those words,

21:48

Young Earth creation is an embarrassment to Christianity. I think of who's 700

21:54

Club, Pat Robertson, and him saying, of course we can't, he's Old Earth, of course we can't believe in a

22:00

Young Earth and his whole reason. Dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago. How can you believe in a

22:05

Young Earth when we've got these dinosaur fossils all over the place? Now, we would want to engage in that conversation and say, man, hey,

22:12

Pat, would you reconsider this idea of dinosaur fossils? Did you know they found red blood cells?

22:17

Did you know they found collagen? Did you know all these different things they've discovered? And say, actually, these are from the flood from just 4 ,400 years ago.

22:26

It fits with a biblical worldview. So they're passionate, number one, because they think it's an embarrassment. Number two, they think intellectually it is scientifically right to believe in an

22:37

Old Earth. And how dare we go against the majority of scientists, another form of intellectual embarrassment.

22:44

And I go, what I would say to them as a Young Earth creationist is, guys, matter of fact, this has happened many times.

22:53

You know, I had a scientist come up to me and he goes, Eric, you know, listen, I get what you're saying and all, but really, 6 ,000 years?

23:00

I appreciate all this God created, I agree, I agree, I agree, but come on, 6 ,000 years? I'm a doctor, man.

23:06

I follow science. I said, you follow science, do you? He said, yeah. I said, can we scientifically prove how

23:13

Jesus rose from the dead? He said, no. He said, can we scientifically prove how

23:18

Jesus walked on water? No. Can we scientifically prove how Jesus broke the bread and the fish and fed 5 ,000?

23:26

No. Why do you believe it? Because he says it happened.

23:33

We believe it despite the science. It's a miracle. It's against science. I said, you know why

23:39

I believe God created the earth in six days? It's a miracle. It goes against the idea of some science and at the same time with the idea of much science.

23:50

I mean, anyway, I won't get into all the science of it, but I'm trusting God's word. So the other side is saying, guys, guys, guys, guys, the

23:58

Bible says so, that's why. And then they'll come back and say, well, what about the times when people thought the

24:04

Bible said something and then later we discovered, well, that's not really what it meant by that. And I go, hey, there are some issues that we need to look at, but the

24:13

Bible does not teach an old earth. The genealogies in scripture, in Matthew and in Genesis, they do not hold to an old earth.

24:22

You really do get only around six to 7 ,000 years. You don't even get tens of thousands of years.

24:29

And Jesus traces his genealogy back to that Adam that lived somewhere around six to 7 ,000 years ago.

24:36

Traces it to David, traces it to Abraham, traces it to Adam. And so we really do have the truth.

24:42

So we're passionate because we're going, guys, guys, guys, this is the authority. Modern science has been proven wrong over and over and over and over and over again.

24:52

Matter of fact, it's scientifically, here's what they would say. What they thought was scientifically accurate in the 1700s, by the 1800s, 90 % of what they thought was scientifically accurate was no longer scientifically accurate.

25:04

Same thing from the 1800s to the 1900s. What they thought was that's proven science. Now they discovered, oh, that's actually not how it works.

25:11

That's not what's going on. Why would we, why would we compromise? Here's the way I would say it.

25:16

Why would we compromise from my passionate young earth position, a perfectly good book that's never been proven wrong, with a theory of evolution that's never been proven right, or the idea of old earth that's never been proven right?

25:30

So science has to be interpreted. What do we believe before we look at the scientific fact determines what we see?

25:37

You want to look at starlight and time? Okay, what do you believe before you look at that in order to come to your conclusion?

25:42

You want to look at the rock layers to the earth? Okay, what do you believe before you even look at that to come to your conclusion about how those were laid down, millions of years, or global flood?

25:51

So it all comes to our starting point. And young earth creationists are passionately going, guys, guys, guys, we watched the church fall for false science.

26:01

Please stop. So we're passionately arguing for the authority of scripture first above the science.

26:08

And old earth worldview would be going, look, I'm for the authority of science, authority of the scripture, but science.

26:16

And I go, oh, we got to put that in the right order. So I love them. I love that we're passionate.

26:23

And yeah, when you really think somebody's wrong, you can get, I mean, I think about how passionate my wife and I have gotten over whether or not

26:30

I had the turn signal on, you know? So something this important, yeah, we get passionate about, but we should also show love and respect.

26:39

I mean, if we're going to show that to the skeptic, and I talked to thousands of skeptics, if I'm going to show love and respect to a total skeptic, surely

26:47

I can have love and respect for somebody who I believe is probably a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ.

26:55

Eric, thank you. I love how you explain that. And I wish this is something that,

27:03

I mean, having both young earth creationist friends and old earth creationist friends, I wish this is something that we could show more grace to each other.

27:10

And that's what bothers me the most. Again, as a young earth creationist, I'm with you on the doctrine, on the teaching.

27:19

I, again, just wish there could be less acrimony, is that the right word?

27:25

And how this debate between the brother and sister in Christ could take place. So, Eric, again, thank you for being on the show.

27:31

Look forward to our future episode where we can get into a little more of the nitty gritty of the evidence and arguments back and forth.

27:37

But for this one, I want to discuss exactly what we did, why this is such an important issue, and why there's such strong opinions on both sides.

27:47

So this has been the Got Questions podcast with Eric Hovind of Creation Today. There'll be links to where you can learn more about Eric and the ministry that God's given him, both in the show notes, on the description on YouTube, and also at podcast .gotquestions

28:01

.org. So I hope this episode has been beneficial and encouraging to you. That's always our goal.

28:07

This is the Got Questions podcast. Got questions? Bible has answers. We'll help you find them.