Article: The Case for Day-Age Creation by Hugh Ross

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Regardless of how old one believes the earth is, it is important for believers to familiarize themselves with the differing views.

In this featured article, Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe makes a case for Day-Age Creation.

Courage and Godspeed,
Chad

Comments

Ron Cram said…
I love Dr. Ross. He presents many good arguments in this article. As someone who shares Christ on the university campus every week, I can tell you that young earth creationism is one of the big reasons so many students leave the church after high school. Far too often, they learn in church and Sunday School that God created the world in six days and that the world is only 6,000 years old. Then they get into college and learn that they were misled. They were told the science supporting was not solid, but it isn't true. The science is very solid and its disheartening and faith-shattering.

Hebrews 4 says God is still enjoying his seventh day of rest. In fact, when we get saved we get to enter into his rest with him. So if the seventh day is still going on, why do people feel the first six days of Genesis 1 were only 24 hours?

One of the biggest problems for the young earth creationist view is the light time-travel problem. Our sun is more than 90 million miles from earth. It takes light about eight minutes to travel from the sun to earth. The sun could blow up in a supernova and we would not know about it for eight minutes. This is completely non-controversial.

But the concept becomes a problem for young earthers when we look through telescopes at stars and galaxies that are millions and billions of light years away. Young earther Kent Hovind has speculated that maybe God created the stars here and then flung them into position in space. In that way, the light would be created between the stars and us and it would just make the universe look old but not actually be old.

But that doesn't really solve the problem. We can watch astronomical events take place at great distances. Just recently, news outlets carried stories of astronomers watching a black hole eat a giant gas cloud. This was happening 24,000 light years away which means, by definition, that it happened 24,000 years ago. If Kent Hovind's idea were true, then that gas cloud never existed. If God created a light show to make us think a gas cloud was being eating by a black hole, but it never existed - wouldn't that be deceptive?

Titus 1:2 says God cannot lie. Psalm 19:1 says "The heavens declare the glory of God." We are supposed to study the heavens and learn about God.

The Bible does not say how old the universe or earth are. The young earth position is not demanded by the Bible. With our telescopes we can directly observe the past. Science disproves the young earth position. Holding onto the young earth position does great damage to the cause of Christ.
February 20, 2014 at 10:35 AM
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