Age of the Earth - Does it Matter what Christians Believe?

Why is there so much controversy in Christian circles about the age of the earth? Do our beliefs about the age of the earth impact how we perceive

God, His creation, the significance of sin, and the present world around us? What about even the gospel itself?

Let's take a closer look to find out. If a loving God created us and the world we live in, then why do we see such suffering, pain, bloodshed, disease?

A quick YouTube tour reveals that even the animal kingdom reflects a fallen world, with video titles like Intense Fight Between Zebra and Lioness, Lone Crocodile Steals Impala Kill from a

Pack of Wild Dogs, Cheetahs and Hyenas Eat Impala Alive, Bear Eating Alive Baby Deer, Hungry Lion Hunting Baby Warthog, Crocodile Surprise Attacks Wildebeest, Green Frog Eats Snake, and Snake Eating a

Snake that is Eating a Frog. Why would God call His creation very good when animals are killing each other to survive?

Is this how it's always been or did it start out differently and then change? Let's take a look at the biblical picture to find out.

In the beginning, God created everything over six days, declaring each day's creation good.

At the end of creation week, God declared His entire creation very good. God created plants and trees to provide food and commanded both people and animals to eat only from these.

Animals did not survive by tearing each other apart for food, but later something happened to this originally very good diet.

Adam and Eve were warned that if they ate fruit from the forbidden tree, they would surely die. They disobeyed, which brought death, suffering, and bloodshed.

God cursed the ground, Adam's work, Eve and childbearing, and plants with thorns and thistles.

As a result of this fall from a perfect creation, the inhabitants of Earth became so violent that God later wiped out mankind and land animals with a flood, saving only eight people and representatives of the animal kinds on the ark.

Biblically speaking, death is an enemy. Would God call a creation full of death and suffering like we see in these videos very good?

Of course not. That's why He promises a new world where these evils will be erased.

Death is the last enemy that Jesus defeated by His resurrection from the dead. His crown of thorns that symbolized the fall and His return from the dead gives hope that the curse will be reversed.

Where we place death in history, either before or after the arrival of mankind, deeply shapes how we view the world.

Adam and Eve were responsible for bringing the curse of sin, death, disease, suffering, thorns, and thistles into the world.

And the evolutionary time scale has these things existing supposedly millions of years before humans were even around.

And if these things existed before the consequences of our sin brought them, this makes them God's ideas rather than the results of our falling away from God.

This doesn't fit the Bible because God said His creation was very good and all life started out vegetarian before the fall.

See the problem? Death, suffering, and carnivorism are the result of the fall of Adam and Eve and were not part of God's original creation.

God warned Adam, You shall not eat it lest you die. This consequence wouldn't have been a big deal to Adam if he was already surrounded by death and suffering.

This issue even connects with the gospel message because why would Jesus have to die to break the curse of sin if it wasn't a literal curse brought on by the literal first parents of humanity?

It was in fact a real curse that was the result of the sin of our real original parents. Perhaps this is why

Jesus was wearing a crown of thorns in his crucifixion, symbolizing his triumph over the curse that God described in Genesis 3.

As stated in Romans, the whole creation has been groaning since just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sin.

In the coming kingdom age when Christ returns, he will reverse the curse of death and the wolf shall also dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.

The lion shall eat straw like the ox. God will restore those good conditions to just like they were before the fall.

All animals will again be herbivores. By inserting millions of years of death before sin, we oppose what the

Bible teaches about death and disease. Ages of bloodshed before humans were even here to bring about the fall wreck

God's description of a very good garden. Genesis genealogies track our origins back only thousands of years.

They established that our sin is why the world turns sour. The Genesis flood happened long after sin.

It left billions of fossils, remnants of dead things, in Earth's rock layers after sin too.

God did not endorse humans eating animals until after the flood as recorded in Genesis 9.

The Bible plainly teaches that God created in six days as we would understand them. What else would

God have wanted the Israelites to believe when he wrote with his own hand in the fourth commandment? For in six days the

Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

God could have created in a split second, but he chose to create over a week so we would have a cycle and rhythm to live by.

And the genealogies in Genesis clearly map to Adam, who was created by God out of dust just thousands of years ago.

And they are even affirmed by the New Testament writers. Denying these fundamental truths, truths that even connect to the gospel itself, result in many trying to fight their spiritual battles with broken swords.

Because our actions and choices in life stem from what we believe, how effective can we be with our minds anchored into secular ideas rather than God's Word?

Inserting millions of years into the Bible, or anything else for that matter, begins a slippery slope.

If truth does not start on the first page, when does it begin? How deeply will the Bible influence our lives if we pick and choose what it says about history, the impact of sin, the nature of God?

The Bible is clear that God spoke creation into existence. He did not use evolution over millions of years, and those

YouTube videos show what is happening in a broken creation after the fall, not how it was from the beginning.

So, yes, what we believe about the age of the earth drastically shapes how we view God's character,

God's creation, the creatures around us, and how severely our sinful choices have impacted the world.

More importantly, placing death after sin validates the whole reason why Lord Jesus defeated death on the cross.

Looking for answers about what the Bible teaches about creation, the fossil record, dinosaurs?

Download the Genesis Apologetics app from the iTunes or Google Play stores for answers to these questions and more.