Does Belief in Biblical Inerrancy Require a Young Earth Perspective?

Biblical Inerrancy and Young Earth Creationism

So, I stand before you today to contend that belief in inerrancy requires belief in young earth creationism, by which I mean that God created the world in six 24-hour days about 6 ,000 years ago, that He cursed the whole creation when Adam sinned, and that He destroyed the world with a global catastrophic flood at the time of Noah.

Now, in 1994, Dr. Ross wrote in one of his books, the facts of nature may be likened to a 67th book of the Bible. More recently, in his book on inerrancy, he offers a scientific defense of biblical inerrancy.

He provides evidence for a moderate concordance view of dual revelation, the notion that God faithfully reveals Himself in the book of Scripture and the book of nature. So he talks about two books, nature and Scripture, and traditionally theologians have described this as general revelation and special revelation.

What does the Bible say about general revelation? What does it reveal? Well, the heavens tell of the glory of God. They declare the work of His hands. They reveal knowledge, but no speech or no words.

Psalm 50 and Psalm 97 say the heavens declare His righteousness and His glory. In Job 12, God says, the beasts, the birds, the earth, and the fish will teach and declare to you that the hand of the Lord has done this.

In Habakkuk, His splendor covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. In Acts 14, when Paul is speaking to the pagans in Lystra, God permitted all the nations to go their own ways, and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains and fruitful seasons and food.

And then in Romans 2, the Gentiles who didn't have the law of Moses showed the work of the law of God written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to God and His moral law. And in Romans 1, the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so that they are without.

Excuse.

So what is general revelation? According to Scripture, general revelation is the truth about God, that He exists and that He has certain attributes. And this truth about God is infallibly revealed through creation and the conscience.

It is given to all people in all times, in all places, in all cultures, and it is understandable to all people. And therefore, every person is without excuse and guilty for failing to thank, worship, trust and obey God.

Well what is general revelation not? It is not science, because most people don't know science. General revelation is not the consensus view among the majority of scientists about the origin and history of the creation, because most people don't know what the majority consensus view is and couldn't even understand it if they did.

And third, general revelation does not require any scientific training to understand it. Nowhere does Scripture call creation a book. Furthermore, creation is non-verbal. Scripture is verbal. Creation is cursed.

Scripture is not cursed. And there is no Bible verse that teaches that creation reveals when and how God created. Therefore, Scripture is superior to nature and supremely authoritative in revealing the truth about when and how God created.

When Dr. Ross says the facts of nature may be likened to the 67th book of the Bible, if you read his books carefully, what he really means by that is that the secular scientific consensus about the origin and history of the creation is the 67th book of the Bible and therefore should be used as the inerrant and supremely authoritative hermeneutical grid for interpreting at least some of Genesis 1 to 11.

And I submit that all old earth Christians are using the same grid whether they realize it or not. But I submit that there is only one book that reveals when and how God created, and that is the inerrant, clear Word of God.

The Meaning of Yom in Genesis 1

So where do we put the millions of years if we're going to fit them into the Bible? Nobody tries to put them between Adam and us. There are four places Christians try to fit those years. One is to spread those millions of years over non-literal days.

Another is to say that the days are literal, but there is an unknown and large amount of time between each of those days. Another is to say that the first day does not begin until verse 3, so there's a gap between verse 1 and verse 3, and that's where we can put the millions of years.

And finally, there's the view of John Walton and others that Genesis 1 is not a creation account of material origins. God made everything before Genesis 1. He only gave the creation function to serve as a cosmic temple.

I think all of these views are false because they're contrary to the inerrant Word of God, and I will make five points. First, these views deny the Bible's clear teaching about young earth creationism.

In Genesis 1, God says He created in six days. The Hebrew word is yom. It's defined literally the very first time He uses the word. It's the light portion of a light-dark cycle, and it's the whole light-dark cycle.

Yom is modified by a number, one day, second day, third day. It's modified by the phrase, there was evening and there was morning. Everywhere in the Old Testament where yom is modified by a number, everywhere in the Old Testament where the Hebrew words for evening and morning are used, they always mean a literal day, a literal part of a day.

And then yom is defined literally in verse 14 when God says that He created the sun, moon, and stars so that we could measure time. But we need to consider some other facts, and that is that God could have used other time words if, in fact, He created over millions of years.

He could have used the Hebrew word dor, which is translated in English Bibles time, period, or generation. If He didn't like that, He could use phrases. He could have said after many days, after some years, after thousands and thousands of years, after years of many generations.

And if He didn't like those Hebrew words or phrases, He could have used Aramaic words He did in Daniel and Nehemiah. But God chose the only word that means a literal day, and it does so most of the 2 ,300 times in the Old Testament.

Second, and sixth, God created supernaturally by His Word. Genesis 1 emphasizes this by saying ten times, and God said, and things happened. And also the chapter clearly teaches that God supernaturally created the first plants animals and people by His Word, but that all subsequent plants, animals, and people would come into existence by natural procreation from the seeds in them.

And Psalm 33 confirms this. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host. He spoke, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. So God didn't speak and then wait billions of years for stars to form.

Seventh, we need to consider Exodus 20, 11. God says to the children of Israel, work six days, for in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. And He uses the same Hebrew words for day as He did in verse 9 of the commandment.

But one of the things He made in those six days was the earth. We go back to Genesis 1, when did He make the earth? He made the earth in verse 1, not in verse 3. So combining Exodus 20 with Genesis 1, it's clear that day 1 begins in verse 1, not in verse 3.

And God says that He made everything in those six days, and so this verse clearly prevents the addition of millions of years anywhere in or before Genesis 1. Finally, God completed creation by day 7. Four times in Genesis 2, God says that He completed His creation.

He rested from His work of creation. So this is emphatic. And I think we can imply from this that present physical processes which scientists study are not how God created the world. Rather, scientists are studying what happened since creation week, how creation functions today, and how God providentially upholds and sustains His creation.

Adam's Fall, Death, and the Curse on Creation

A second reason all the old earth views are incompatible with the inerrant Word of God is that they contradict the Bible's clear teaching about Adam's fall and God's judgment. We have in the world today moral evil caused by sinful human behavior.

But we also have natural evil like earthquakes and Hurricane Helena and Milton and tsunamis. And we live on a planet covered with thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks containing billions of dead things.

And we live in a world where there are creatures which rip other creatures apart. In the evolutionary view of time, there have been millions of years of death and disease and suffering and extinction, carnivory, thorns.

But the Bible says God created a very good creation where there was no moral or natural.

Evil.

Man sinned against God, and that brought the judgment of God on the whole creation. So in evolution, you have death before man. In the Bible, you have man before death. In Genesis 1, God says He created man, Adam and Eve, and all the land animals and birds to be vegetarian.

He called the creation very good at that point. But it didn't stay very good for very long because Adam and Eve sinned. And the first creature that God judged was the serpent. On your belly you will crawl.

Animals were also cursed. Cursed are you, serpent, more than or above all cattle and beasts of the field. Eve was judged with increased pain and childbirth. Physical death began for humans. From dust you came and to dust you shall return.

And the ground was cursed with thorns. And Paul says we now know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. But the evolutionists tell us that there are fossil thorns and rock layers that they date to be 300 to 400 million years old.

And the evolutionists tell us that dinosaur bones that are at least 65 million years old show evidence of cancer, brain tumors, and arthritis. And the evolutionists say there have been five major mass extinction events in the history of this earth when anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of all the species living at the time perished.

We're talking about massive death on a scale we've never seen since Adam. Now there are many different views in the church, and they all have different ways of interpreting Genesis, especially Genesis 1, but they all have one thing in common.

They all accept the millions of years of death and disease and suffering and extinction. But God says He started with a very good creation, no moral or natural evil. Man sinned, and that brought God's curse on creation, resulting in death and disease and natural disasters.

We live in a fallen, cursed creation, no longer very good. And Jesus was born into that world to die on the cross, to pay the penalty for our sins, to rise from the dead, to give us eternal life, and to restore us to a right relationship with God.

And then He ascended to heaven, and one day He's coming again to create a new heavens and a new earth where there'll be no more curse. But all old earth views imply that the creation was cursed from the very beginning with exploding stars, asteroid impacts, earthquakes, hurricanes, animal death, disease, and extinction.

And if that is true, then when Jesus comes again, He's not coming again to fix a world that was ruined by sin and His holy judgment, but to fix a world that He did a lousy job of creating. And I submit that as contrary to the Word of God.

God's Character, the Flood of Noah, and Jesus on the Age of the Earth

Third, these views conflict with the character of God clearly revealed in Scripture. As we saw, God says that He created the sun, moon, and stars so that we could measure time. But if millions of years really happened, then for most of their existence, the sun, moon, and stars did not fulfill the purpose for which God created them.

I ask a question. What kind of God says this and does this? In Isaiah 45, God says, I made the earth and created man upon it. And through Isaiah, He says, God formed the earth to be inhabited, to be inhabited by man.

But what kind of a God says this and then waits four and a half billion years after He made the earth to make man? This makes sense only if Adam and Eve were created five days after He made the earth.

We need to remember the order of events in the evolutionary story, the Big Bang, and then billions of years later, the first stars, and billions of years later, our sun, and about 500 million years later, our earth, which started as a hot molten lava ball.

It cooled, it developed a hard crust, it evolved an atmosphere, it rained, and oceans formed. But God says that He created the earth first, completely covered with water. On day three, He made dry land and all the land plants, and on day four, He made the sun, moon, and stars.

And then the evolutionists say life began in the oceans. Millions of years after the first sea creatures, land plants evolved. Millions of years after the first land plants, dinosaurs evolved. And millions of years after the first dinosaurs, birds evolved.

But God says He made all the land plants before He made a single sea creature. He made all the birds before He made the dinosaurs. So, if God really created over billions of years, then not only did God use the wrong time words in Genesis 1, day, night, evening, morning, when He could have used other time words to indicate millions of years, He didn't even tell us the correct order that He created and what kind of a God would do this.

If the millions of years is really true, then God could see all those fossil layers under the Garden of Eden. I ask, what kind of a God calls this very good? The story of millions of years, I submit, is a Satan-inspired, sinners-invented attack on God's wisdom, goodness, power, and truthfulness.

And I will explain the historical proof of that in my breakout session tomorrow. Fourth, all old earth views are contrary to the inerrant Word of God because they ignore or reject the Bible's clear teaching about the global flood of Noah.

There's much evidence that this was a global catastrophe. The purpose of the flood was to destroy not only sinful man, but all land animals and all birds not in the ark and the surface of the earth. Only a global flood will accomplish the purpose.

The purpose of the ark was to save eight people and representatives of each kind of land animal and bird to repopulate the whole earth. The ark was unnecessary if it was a local flood in the Middle East.

The universal terms, all, every, under heaven, in whose nostrils is the breath of life, appear 60 times. This is emphatic. And the rainbow promise, which was not just to the animals and people who came off the ark, but also to all of their descendants.

And if the flood was a local flood in the Middle East, then God lied.

God lied.

We could talk about the height of the flood above all the pre-flood mountains under the heavens. We could talk about the duration of the flood, the landing of the ark, not in a valley, but on the highest mountain in the mountains of Ararat.

The rock layers of fossils either formed before Adam or they formed after Adam. If they formed before Adam, the only reason you would believe that is because you're believing what the secular scientific majority says about millions of years.

If it formed after Adam, the most logical cause is Noah's flood for most of it. So if we believe in the millions of years, we will have to ignore or reject the global flood. But if we believe what God's Word says about the flood, then this is another reason to reject the millions of years.

And finally, these views contradict what Jesus clearly said about the age of the earth. When questioned about divorce by the Pharisees, Jesus said, from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

And he quoted from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And so when Jesus said that, it was about 4 ,000 years after the beginning according to chronological information in the Bible. Adam and Eve were on the sixth day of creation, which is the beginning of creation, speaking in non-technical, non-scientific language.

But in the evolutionary view of 14 billion years, man came at the tail end of time. And so if Jesus is my Lord, I can't have a different view than he had. And if Jesus is your Lord, then I would urge you to carefully consider my in-depth but not difficult to understand article defending that Jesus was a young earth creationist.

It's on our website, and it's also in a book on our table. And so I submit to you that belief in inerrancy requires belief in young earth creationism. Thank you for your attention.

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 timescale 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 establish 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.