db for week one
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Young-Earth Creationist View Summarized & Defended Terry Mortenson, MDiv, PhD
Feb 16, 2011, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v6/n1/yec-view-summary
Dr. John McLean has my permission to use this article
with his online course at Liberty University.
Abstract
There is a great amount of controversy in the church today regarding evolution and the age of the
earth. Many competing views attract the attention of Christians producing great confusion and
leading many Christians to conclude that it just doesn’t matter. In this article, I will explain and
give a brief defense of the young-earth creationist view as the only proper understanding of
Scripture. All other views are compromise with error. I will also explain some of the reasons
why this matters for all Christians.
This article is an extract from the beginning of a longer paper which was originally published in
Answers Research Journal in 2009 as Systematic Theology Texts and the Age of the Earth. That
paper critiques the old-earth arguments in three of the leading systematic theology textbooks (by
Millard Erickson, Wayne Grudem and Gordon Lewis/Bruce Demarest) used in seminaries and
Christian colleges in America and around the world. The section of that article is used for this
present article with permission of the ARJ editor, and the pdf of this shorter document may be
particularly useful as a handout in Sunday school or other teaching contexts, as two teachers
have previously requested.
Young-earth creationists believe that the creation days of Genesis 1 were six literal (24-hour)
days, which occurred 6,000–12,000 years ago.1 They believe that about 2,300–3,300 years before
Christ, the surface of the earth was radically rearranged by Noah’s Flood. All land animals and
birds not in Noah’s ark (along with many sea creatures) perished, many of which were
subsequently buried in the Flood sediments. Therefore, creationists believe that the global,
catastrophic Flood was responsible for most (but not all) of the rock layers and fossils (i.e., some
rock layers and possibly some fossils were deposited before the Flood, while other layers and
fossils were produced in postdiluvian localized catastrophic sedimentation events or processes).
The biblical arguments in support of this view can be briefly summarized as follows.2
1. Genesis is history, not poetry,3 parable, prophetic vision, or mythology. This is seen in the Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 1,4 the fact that Genesis 1–11 has the same
characteristics of historical narrative as in Genesis 12–50, most of Exodus, much of
Numbers, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, etc. (which are discernibly distinct from the
characteristics of Hebrew poetry, parable, or prophetic vision), and the way the other
biblical authors and Jesus treat Genesis 1–11 (as literal history).5
2. The very dominant meaning of yôm in the Old Testament is a literal day, and the context of Genesis 1 confirms that meaning there.6 Yôm is defined in its two literal senses in
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verse 5. It is repeatedly used with a number (one day, second day, etc.) and with evening
and morning, which elsewhere in the OT always means a literal day. It is defined again
literally in verse 14 in relation to the movement of the heavenly bodies.
3. God created the first animate and inanimate things supernaturally and instantly. They were fully formed and fully functioning. For example, plants, animals, and people were
mature adults ready to reproduce naturally “after their kinds.” When God said “let there
be . . . ” He did not have to wait millions of years for things to come into existence. He
spoke, and things happened immediately (Psalm 33:6–9).
4. The order of creation in Genesis 1 contradicts the order of events in the evolution story in at least 30 points. For example, the Bible says the earth was created before the sun and
stars, just the opposite of the big bang theory. The Bible says that fruit trees were created
before any sea creatures and that birds were created before dinosaurs (which were made
on Day 6, since they are land animals), exactly the opposite of the evolution story. The
Bible says the earth was covered completely with water before dry land appeared, and
then it was covered again at the Flood. Evolution theory says the earth has never been
covered with a global ocean, and dry land existed before the first seas.7
5. Exodus 20:8–11 resists all attempts to add millions of years anywhere in or before Genesis 1 because Exodus 20:11 says that God created everything in six days. The day-
age view is ruled out because the plural form of the Hebrew word for day (yôm) is used in
both parts of the commandment. The days of the Jewish work-week are the same as the
days of Creation Week. God could have used several other words or phrases here or in
Genesis 1, if He meant to say “work six days because I created in six long, indefinite
periods.”8 But He didn’t. These verses also rule out the gap theory or any attempt to add
millions of years before Genesis 1:1 because God says He created the heavens, the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them during the six days described in Genesis 1. He made
nothing before those six days. It should also be noted that the fourth commandment is one
of only a few of the Ten Commandments that contains a reason for the commandment. If
God created over millions of years, He could have not given a reason for Sabbath-
keeping or He could have given a theological or redemptive reason as He did elsewhere.9
6. In Jesus’ comments about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc., He clearly took the events recorded in Genesis as literal history, just
as did all the New Testament writers. Several passages show that Jesus believed that man
was created at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning (as all
old-earth views imply), which confirms the young-earth creationist view (Mark 10:6 and
13:19 and Luke 11:50–51).10 His miracles also confirm the young-earth view. From His
first miracle of turning water into wine (which revealed his glory as the Creator, cf. John
2:11 and 1:1–5) to all His other miracles (e.g., Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 1:40-42), His
spoken word brought an immediate, instantaneous result, just as God’s word did in
Creation Week.11
7. The Bible teaches that there was no animal or human death before the Fall of Adam and Eve. So the geological record of rock layers and fossils could not have been millions of
years before the Fall. See my development of this point below.
8. The nature of God as revealed in Scripture rules out the idea that He created over millions of years. See below.
9. The global catastrophic Flood of Noah was responsible for producing most (but not all) of the geological record of rock layers and fossils.12 Both a casual reading and careful
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exegesis show that this was not a local flood in Mesopotamia.13 It is most unreasonable to
believe in a global, year-long Flood that left no geological evidence (or that it only left
evidence in the low lands of the Fertile Crescent, as some suppose14). The global
evidence of sedimentary rock layers filled with land and marine fossils is exactly the kind
of evidence we would expect from Noah’s Flood. If most of the rock record is the
evidence of the Flood, then there really is no geological evidence for millions of years.
But the secular geologists deny the global Flood of Noah’s day because they deny that
there is any geological evidence for such a flood. So, the fossiliferous rock record is
either the evidence of Noah’s Flood or the evidence of millions of years of geological
change. It cannot be evidence of both. If we do not accept the geological establishment’s
view of Noah’s Flood, then we cannot accept their view of the age of the earth. So, it is
logically inconsistent to believe in both a global Noachian Flood and millions of years.
10. The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 give us the years from Adam to Abraham, who virtually all scholars agree lived about 2000 BC. This sets the date of creation at
approximately 6,000 years ago. Some young-earth creationists say the creation may be
10,000–12,000 years old, but the arguments for gaps of any length of time in the Genesis
5 and 11 genealogies are not compelling to this writer and many others. Although there
are some biblical genealogies that do have names omitted (e.g., Matthew 1:1-17 or Mark
10:47), Freeman, Jones and Pierce present strong arguments for accepting these Genesis
genealogies as tight chronologies with no gaps.15
11. For eighteen centuries the almost universal belief of the Church was that the creation began 4,000–5,000 years before Christ.16 So, young-earth creationism is historic
Christian orthodoxy. It was also Jewish orthodoxy at least up to the end of the first
century of church history.17 In light of this fact, it seems inconsistent with the truth-loving
nature of God revealed in Scripture to think that for about 3,000 years God let faithful
Jews and Christians (especially the writers of Scripture) believe that Genesis teaches a
literal six-day creation about 6,000 years ago but that in the early nineteenth century He
used godless men (scientists who rejected the Bible as God’s inerrant Word) to correct
the Church’s understanding of Genesis.18
Two of the points above require further explanation because they are so important and are
overlooked or resisted by nearly all Christians who have advocated the acceptance of millions of
years over the past two centuries.
Death before the Fall?
Simply put, the evolutionary idea of millions of years is diametrically opposed to the Bible’s
teaching about death.19
Evolution says that during the course of millions of years, death, bloodshed, suffering, disease
and extinction eventually led to man’s existence. The late evolutionary astrophysicist Carl Sagan
said, “The secrets of evolution are time and death: time for the slow accumulations of favorable
mutations, and death to make room for new species.”20 So when evolutionists talk about millions
of years, they are not merely referring to a large number. They are imagining a long period of
history in which certain events took place.
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The fossils, which the evolutionists say represent millions of years of history, are a record not of
life, but of death. And in many places around the world we see evidence of massive and violent
carnage in fossil graveyards containing millions of former living creatures packed in high
concentrations.
So, whether Christians believe in Neo-Darwinian evolution, or they believe that God
supernaturally created different kinds of plants and animals occasionally during the course of
millions of years, they are still adopting an evolutionary view of death when they accept millions
of years.
But the biblical teaching on death is very clear and consistent from Genesis to Revelation.
Genesis 1 says six times that God called the creation “good.” When He finished creation on Day
6, He called everything “very good.” That “very good” state is reflected partially by the fact that
man, animals and birds were originally vegetarian, according to Genesis 1:29–30. Plants are not
living in the same sense as people, animals, and birds are, according to this and other Scripture
passages. Plants are never called “living creatures” (Hebrew: nephesh chayyah), as people, land
animals, birds and sea creatures are called (Genesis 1:20–21, 24 and 30; Genesis 2:7; Genesis
6:19–20 and Genesis 9:10–17).21 So plant “death” is not the same as animal or human death (cf.
Job 14:7–12, John 12:24).
Adam and Eve sinned, resulting in the judgment of God on the whole creation. Instantly Adam
and Eve died spiritually, evidenced by their hiding from God. But they also began to die
physically and Paul clearly had physical death in mind in Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–
22 (as the context shows), when he says that death came into the human race through Adam’s
sin. The serpent was cursed, along with other animals, resulting in a physical transformation. It is
reasonable to assume that the other cursed animals were also altered physically in some way,
either morphologically or at least behaviorally (Genesis 3:14). Eve was changed physically so as
to have increased pain in child-birth (Genesis 3:16). And the ground itself was cursed (Genesis
3:17–19), a fact which was still on the minds of people 1,000 years later when Noah was born
(Genesis 5:29).
The whole earth was cursed again at Noah’s Flood (Genesis 8:22). God also threatened and later
executed curses on the land, crops and livestock of the Jews, as well as on the people themselves,
on account of their disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15-68). The whole creation now groans in
bondage to corruption (because of the Genesis 3 curse), waiting for the final act in the
redemption of Christians—giving them immortal resurrected bodies (Romans 8:19–25).22 When
that redemptive event happens, we will see the restoration and redemption of all things (Acts
3:21 and Colossians 1:20) to a state similar to the pre-Fall world. Then there will be no more
carnivorous behavior (Isaiah 11:6–9) and no disease, suffering, or death (Revelation 21:3–5)
because there will be no more Curse (Revelation 22:3).23 To accept millions of years of animal
death before the Creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys not only the Bible’s teaching
on death but also undermines its teaching on the full redemptive work of Christ.
If God cursed the earth with thorns after Adam sinned (as Genesis 3:18 says, “both thorns and
thistles is shall grow for you”),24 then why do we find fossil thorns in rocks that the evolutionists
claim are about 350 million years old?25 If the millions of years are true, then God lied. If
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Genesis 3:18 is true, then the evolution claims about millions of years are a lie. Were arthritis
and cancer in the “very good” world before man sinned? If the evolutionists’ dating methods are
correct, the answer must be “yes.” Many kinds of disease have been found in the fossil record,
including arthritis, abscesses, and tumors in dinosaur bones dated to be 110 million years old. A
researcher of these bones tells us that “diseases look the same through time … it makes no
difference whether this is now or a hundred million years ago.”26 There is also considerable
evidence of rickets, syphilis, dental disease, etc., in human fossil bones that evolutionists date to
be tens or hundreds of thousands of years before any biblically plausible date for Adam.27 If the
Bible is true, then those dates are false and there was no pre-Fall death and disease.
Evolutionists believe that over the course of a half billion years there were five major extinction
events/periods,28 when 65–90 percent of all species living at those particular times went extinct.
They also claim many lesser extinction events/periods. If this was the way the creation was for
millions of years, then what impact on the creation did the Fall have? None. Contrary to what the
Bible says, the Fall would have only caused spiritual death in man. In fact, we can go further and
say that if the millions of years of death, disease and extinction really did occur, then that “very
good” creation was considerably worse than the world we now inhabit where habitats are
polluted or destroyed and creatures are brought to extinction due to human sin. We have never
seen in human history29 the kind of mass-kill, extinction events that the evolutionary geologists
say occurred before man came into existence (unless, that is, we accept the global Flood of
Noah’s day, but that is the very event that old-earth proponents reject).
So, if the millions of years really happened, then the Fall actually improved the world from what
it was in the “very good” pre-Fall creation. In this case, the Curse at the Fall would actually be a
blessing!
I conclude then that if the Bible’s teaching on death, the Curse and the final redemptive work of
Christ is true, as it surely is, then the millions-of-years idea must be a grand myth, really a lie.
Conversely, if the millions of years really happened, then the Bible’s teaching on these subjects
must be utterly false, which is devastating for the gospel.
The Nature of God
Closely related to this issue of death is the incompatibility of the idea of millions of years with
the character of God, as revealed in Scripture.30
The events of creation in Genesis 1 were clearly miraculous. God spoke and things immediately
came into existence, as both Genesis 1 and Psalm 33:6–9 state. The emphatic repetition of “and it
was so” and “God saw that it was good” and “there was evening and there was morning, the Xth
day” strongly indicate this. Also, it is difficult to imagine how God could say “let there be light”
and then need to wait millions of years for light to appear. Similarly, Adam surely did not sleep
for days, weeks, months, years, or millions of years while God made Eve. These facts support
the conclusion that all the other divine acts in Genesis 1 were essentially instantaneous or
occurred in a miraculously short period of time, on the respective days they are reported to have
occurred. Conversely, there is nothing in the text that indicates that thousands or millions of
years would have been required for God to accomplish His objective in each act of creation.
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It is also clear in Genesis 1 that God supernaturally created the first plants, sea creatures, birds,
land animals and the first human couple because the description of those events is stated in a way
that contrasts with the description of how other such creatures would come into existence after
the original ones—i.e., by the natural growth of seeds in the fruit of the first plants or by the
sexual reproduction of the first animal and human pairs. Also, the nature of all God’s later
miracles in the Bible and the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels were instantaneous. So, again the
way God created requires no vast stretches of time.
If the gap theory is true, then what kind of God is it who would create the earth and all forms of
life, except man, and let them live and die for millions of years and then destroy them all (in a
supposed flood associated with Satan’s fall) before He recreated the world with creatures very
similar to the ones He had already destroyed?
If the day-age view or framework hypothesis or any other old-earth view is true, then what kind
of God is it who would create the earth instantly and then leave it covered with water for millions
of years and then create dry land and plants and let them produce for millions of years before He
made the sun? And what kind of God would make the sun, moon, and stars with the purpose of
enabling man to measure the passage of time, but then wait billions of years before He made man
to measure time periods? That makes God out to be quite foolish.
Or if we reject the order of events in Genesis 1 and say that the evolutionary order of appearance
of the different creatures and the time-scale are correct, we have other theological problems.
What kind of God would create the earth 4.5 billion years ago and let it exist for one billion years
before He made the first microscopic creatures (protozoans31) and then waited another 2.875
billion years before He made the first metazoans32 and then waited another 625 million years
before He made Adam, who was the ultimate goal of His creation and was made to rule over all
the animals, most of whom lived and died before Adam was created?33 This is a bizarre, wasteful
God, and nothing like the wise and omnipotent Creator revealed in Scripture.
And if God really created in the order and over the long time-scales that evolutionists claim, does
this not make God a deceiver or a liar or at least a very incompetent communicator when He
inspired Moses to write the Genesis 1 account of the order of His creative acts, which is so
contradictory to the evolutionary order of events of history?
Furthermore, as we noted before, at the end of Creation Week God called everything that He had
made “very good.” But could the God of Scripture really describe as “very good” a fossil
graveyard of thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks covering the whole earth and containing
billions of fossils of former living things? Could He really call cancer (as seen in dinosaur bones)
“very good”? Could He call thorns and thistles “very good,” when in Genesis 3 He says they are
the result of His curse? If God called all this death “very good” and if God told Adam that thorns
were a consequence of his sin when in fact they existed long before he was created, then again
God lied or He is totally incompetent in His use of language. But the biblical God is the God of
truth, and as the Author of all language He is fully capable of saying exactly what He means. It is
Satan who is a liar and a master deceiver.
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Additionally, if God created through a process (either progressive creation or theistic evolution)
that involved millions of years of death, then He is very different from the God revealed in the
post-Fall world. The God of the post-Fall world commanded His people (the Israelites) to take
care of their animals and give them a day of rest (Exodus 20:10 and 23:12). The post-Fall God
commanded them to help lost or trapped animals (Exodus 23:4–5). That God told them not to be
cruel to their animals (such as muzzling an ox while it was threshing, Deuteronomy 25:4). The
post-Fall God says that “a righteous man has regard for the life of his beast, but the compassion
of the wicked is cruel” (Proverbs 12:10). That God says that He cares for the creatures of the
earth in His fallen, cursed creation (Psalm 104:14–16 and 27–28, Psalm 145:14–16, Psalm
147:9, Jonah 4:11, Matthew 6:26, and Luke 12:24).34
If millions of years of death and extinction and disease really occurred, then God is like the
wicked man of Proverbs 12:10 and He was doing exactly the opposite of what He told the Jews
to do. The acceptance of millions of years is an assault on the character of Almighty God.
If God created over those millions of years, then He clearly was not intelligent enough and
powerful enough to create a world right in the first place. Either He lacked the sovereign power
to control His creation so that it did not destroy most of His previous work or He intentionally
created obstacles to hinder Himself from accomplishing His intention of making a very good
world. And then all along the way He kept making creatures very similar to the creatures that He
had just destroyed by intention or by incompetence and impotence. What a monstrous God this
would be! He would be less competent than the most incompetent engineer or construction
worker. And He would be grossly unjust and unrighteous compared to the God of Isaiah who
said that when the knowledge of Him fills the earth, animals will not hurt or kill each other or
people (Isaiah 11:6–9 and 65:25).35 Such a cruel, bumbling, and weak God could not be trusted
and would not be worthy of our worship.
And if these millions of years of death really occurred, then God’s Curse on creation really did
nothing to the non-human creation, and His promises about the future cannot be trusted. In fact,
in this case none of His Word can be trusted.
This point has not escaped the notice of non-Christians. The evolutionist philosopher, David
Hull, is one of many who could be cited. He remarks on the implications of Darwinian evolution
for the nature of God, but his comments equally apply to all old-earth views, even if we reject
Darwinism as the explanation for the origin of the various forms of life. Hull reasons:
The problem that biological evolution poses for natural theologians is the sort of God that
a Darwinian version of evolution implies. … The evolutionary process is rife with
happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain and horror. ... Whatever the God
implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, he is not the
Protestant God of waste not, want not. He is also not a loving God who cares about his
productions. He is not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of the
Galápagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort
of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.36
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In his opposition to the old-earth geological theories developing in the early nineteenth century,
the Anglican minister, George Bugg, reasoned this way:
Hence then, we have arrived at the wanton and wicked notion of the Hindoos, viz., that
God has ‘created and destroyed worlds as if in sport, again and again’!! But will any
Christian Divine who regards his Bible, or will any Philosopher who believes that the
Almighty works no ‘superfluous miracles,’ and does nothing in vain, advocate the
absurdity that a wise, just and benevolent Deity has, ‘numerous’ times, wrought miracles,
and gone out of his usual way for the sole purpose of destroying whole generations of
animals, that he might create others very like them, but yet differing a little from their
predecessors!!37
Only young-earth creationism gives us a view that is consistent with the glory, wisdom, power,
holiness, truthfulness, and omniscient intelligence of the God revealed through the pages of
Scriptures. As the Bible presents them, the doctrines of death and the nature of God are utterly
opposed to the millions-of-years view. If we believe the Bible’s teaching on death and the
character of God, then we must completely reject all old-earth views being advocated by
Christians.38
Conclusion
The Bible clearly teaches the young-earth creationist view of Genesis 1–11. That was the almost
universal belief of the church for 1800 years. Progressive Creationism and Theistic Evolutionism
in all their various forms (day-age view, gap theory, framework hypothesis, analogical days
view, local flood view, etc.) are recent and novel interpretations that will not stand up to scrutiny
with an open Bible. A growing body of overwhelming scientific evidence also shows that
evolution and millions of years are religiously motivated myths masquerading as scientific fact.39
Furthermore, the literal history of Genesis 1-11 is absolutely foundational to the truth of the rest
of the Bible and the gospel itself. Taking these early chapters of Genesis in any other way
undermines God’s Word and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and over the past 200 years such
compromises with evolution and millions of years have done incalculable damage to the spiritual
health and evangelistic and missionary efforts of the Church. That compromise is one of the
greatest, if not the greatest reason that Western Europe is now labeled “post-Christian” and
Britian and America are rapidly approaching that spiritual state. Ultimately, the question of the
age of the earth is a question of the truth and authority of Scripture. That’s why the age of the
earth matters so much and why the church cannot compromise with millions of years (or
evolution).
Help keep these daily articles coming. Support AiG.
Footnotes
1. See point 10 below in the text for an explanation on the range of years here. Back 2. Most of these points are well defended (including refutation of the most common
objections to the young-earth view) in Chaffey, Tim, and Jason Lisle. 2007. Old-Earth
9
Creationism on Trial. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. And Sarfati, Jonathan.
2004. Refuting Compromise. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. Back
3. The fact that Genesis records Adam’s poetic and romantic statement in Gen 2:23 and the words of Jacob’s poetic prophecy given to his sons in Gen 49:2-27 does not negate the
fact that Genesis is history. It accurately records what those men poetically said on those
occasions. Back
4. See Steven Boyd, “The Genre of Genesis 1:1–2:3: What Means This Text?” in Mortenson, Terry, and Thane H. Ury, eds. 2008. Coming to Grips with Genesis, pp. 163–
192. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. A fuller technical discussion is Steven Boyd,
“Statistical Determination of Genre in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence for an Historical
Reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3,” in Vardiman, Larry, et al. 2005. Radioisotopes and the Age
of the Earth, Vol. 2, pp. 631–734. El Cajon, California: ICR. “A layman’s summary of
Boyd’s research” in DeYoung, Donald. 2005. Thousands, Not Billions: Challenging an
Icon of Evolution, pp. 157–172. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. Back
5. Even most old-earth proponents recognize that Genesis 1–11 is history. See, for example, the arguments in Kaiser, Walter. 2001. The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable
and Relevant? pp. 53–83. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP. Back
6. See also Hasel, Gerhard F. 1994. The “days” of creation in Genesis 1: Literal “days” or figurative “periods/epochs” of time? Origins 21 no. 1: 5–38; Steinmann, Andrew E.
;as an ordinal number and the meaning of Genesis 1:5, JETS 45 no. 4: 577–84 ֶאָחד .2002
McCabe, Robert. 2000. A Defense of Literal Days in the Creation Week. DBSJ 5: 97–
123. Back
7. See Mortenson, Terry. 2006. Evolution vs. Creation: the order of events matters! www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0404order.asp Back
8. Stambaugh, James. 1991 The Days of Genesis: A Semantic Approach. TJ 5 no. 1: 70–78. www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v5/i1/semantic.asp Back
9. Exodus 31:13 and Deuteronomy 5:13–15. Back 10. See Mortenson, Terry. “Jesus, Evangelical Scholars and the Age of the Earth,” in
Mortenson and Ury, Coming to Grips, pp. 315-346. See also Mortenson, Terry. 2004. But
from the beginning of . . . the institution of marriage?
www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/1101ankerberg_response.asp, which is a short
response to a web article by John Ankerberg and Norman Geisler on Mark 10:6. Back
11. This is true even of the two-stage healing of the blind man (Mark 8:22–25). Each stage of the healing was instantaneous. Jesus apparently did this miracle in stages for a
pedagogical purpose. Back
12. Barrick, William D. “Noah's Flood and its Geological Implications” in Mortenson and Ury, Coming to Grips, pp. 251-282. Back
13. See Whitcomb, John, and Henry Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood, pp. 1–88. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R. And Sarfati, Jonathan. Refuting Compromise, pp. 241–
286. Back
14. Hallo, William W., and William Kelly Simpson. 1998. The Ancient Near East: A History, 2nd ed., pp. 32-33. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace. Back
15. See Freeman, Travis R. “Do the Genesis 5 & 11 Genealogies Contain Gaps?” in Mortenson and Ury, Coming to Grips,, pp. 283-31, and his PhD thesis “The
Chronological Value of Genesis 5 and 11 in Light of Recent Biblical Investigation.”
(1998, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary). See also Jones, Floyd N. 2005. The
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Chronology of the Old Testament. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books. And Pierce,
Larry. 2006. The World: Born in 4004 BC? Answers Magazine 1 no. 1:25–26, 72.
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n1/world-born-4004-bc Back
16. See also Mortenson, Terry. 2004. The Great Turning Point: the Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology—before Darwin, pp. 40–45. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books.
Some followed the Genesis chronology of the Septuagint, rather than the Massoretic text,
and so calculated creation at about 5400 BC Back
17. The Works of Josephus, pp. 29–33. trans. William Whiston. 1987. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson. Back
18. An earlier reader of this paper objected that God used many “evil” nations to judge ancient Israel (e.g., Babylon, Greece, Medo-Persia, Rome, etc.), and He has used non-
Christians to make discoveries in medicine to cure disease or improve technologies. So
why would it be surprising or unlikely that God would use non-Christians to understand
the Bible? Well, in the first case, God was using godless nations to judge Israel for her
wickedness, not to help her understand Scripture. Likewise, making advances in science
is a categorically different activity than rightly dividing the inspired Word of truth, which
teaches us that ungodly men twist the Scriptures, but that God has given spiritually gifted
and godly men to the church to understand Scripture aright. Back
19. I call this the “evolutionary idea of millions of years” because 1) all evolutionists believe in millions of years and 2) because, although the idea of millions of years was accepted
before Darwin’s theory of evolution was published, the uniformitarian naturalistic
assumptions that Darwin used to develop his theory were taken from the writings of the
old-earth geologists before him. And those same assumptions are behind the billions-of-
years, evolutionary stories about the origin and history of the universe. Back
20. Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” TV series, program entitled “One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue.” Back
21. See Todhunter, Michael. 2006. Do Leaves Die? Answers Magazine, 1 no. 2:10–13, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/do-leaves-die. See also Stambaugh, James.
1991. Creation’s original diet and the changes at the fall, TJ 5 no. 2:130–138,
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v5/i2/diet.asp. Back
22. This is the dominant interpretation of Romans 8:19–23 in the history of the Church, which is understandable since this is the only interpretation that really makes sense
exegetically and theologically. See Moo, Douglas. 1996. The Epistle to the Romans pp.
513–514. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans; Schreiner, Thomas. 1998. Romans, p. 435.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker; and Murray, John. 1993. The Epistle to the Romans, pp.
301–302. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. Back
23. While I am inclined to think that Isaiah 11:6–9 refers to the literal 1,000-year millennium right before the eternal state begins, I am not certain on that point. But, even if that is
wrong, clearly the passage is speaking of a future state of affairs that is very different
from the present, for it will be a time when righteousness will fill the earth as the water
covers the seas. In that righteous world both man and the animals will be significantly
changed. Surely in the eternal perfect state this change in the animals will continue. The
point is that carnivorous behavior is part of the fallen world, not the period before the Fall
or after the return of Christ, when righteousness will indeed fill the earth. Back
24. Some might object that God cursed the Garden of Eden with thorns. But this objection fails for three reasons. First, why would God curse the Garden with thorns and tell Adam
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about it, when Adam was going to be expelled from the Garden? Second, the ground that
God cursed with thorns was the same ground outside the Garden that Adam would sweat
over to provide food for himself and his family. Third, the Hebrew words for “curse” and
“ground” in Genesis 3:17 are the same as those used in Genesis 5:29, which speaks of the
cursed ground in Noah’s day. Back
25. Stewart, Wilson N., and Gar W. Rothwell. 1993. Paleobotany and the Evolution of Plants, pp. 172–176. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. It shows fossilized
thorny plants (Psilophyton crenulatum) found in the Devonian formation, which the
evolutionists date at 345–395 million years BP (before present). Back
26. Anonymous. 1998. Saurian Sore. Discover October:26. Back 27. Lubenow, Marvin. 1998. Pre-Adamites, Sin, Death and the Human Fossils. Creation Ex
Nihilo Technical Journal 12 no. 2: 222–232. Back
28. The names and approximate evolutionary dates of the supposed five major extinction events are these: Late Ordovician (440 Million Years Ago, 100+ families of marine
invertebrates perished, park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/ordmass.html, accessed 11
Aug. 2009), Late Devonian (365 MYA, 70% of marine invertebrates perished along with
other marine life, park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/devmass.html, accessed 11 Aug.
2009), Permian-Triassic (245 MYA, greatest mass extinction event, 90-95% of marine
species extinct), Late Triassic (210 MYA, at least 50% of species extinct,
wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic%E2%80%93Jurassic_extinction_event, accessed 11 Aug
2009), Cretaceous-Tertiary (65 MYA, second largest mass extinction, 85% of all species,
including all dinosaurs). See park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/cretmass.html
(accessed 11 Aug 2009). The Canadian web site bases its information on Stanley, Steven
M. (a leading evolutionist). 1987. Extinction. New York: Scientific American Library.
Back
29. That is, if we rule out Noah’s Flood as a global Flood—which we logically must do if we accept millions of years. The reason is this: the same scientific establishment that
dogmatically states that the geological record reflects millions of years of history also
insists that there is no geological evidence of a global Flood. To accept what the secular
geologists say about the first point but to reject what they say about the second point is
inconsistent. But to believe in a global Flood that occurred about 4000 years ago and left
no lasting erosional and sedimentary geological evidence while believing that the
geological effects of lesser floods occurring millions of years ago survived the ravages of
time and Noah’s Flood until our day is most unreasonable. So we must decide: either we
believe God’s Word about a global Flood or we believe in millions of years. We cannot
consistently or logically believe in both. Back
30. I am indebted to Dr. David Fouts, whose lecture a few years ago first drew my attention to many of the points presented here. At the time he was an Old Testament professor at
Bryan College in Tennessee. Back
31. Protozoans are microscopic animals made up of a single cell or a group of more or less identical cells and living in water or as parasites, including ciliates, flagellates, rhizopods,
or sporozoans. Back
32. Metazoans are all animals whose bodies, originating from a single cell, are composed of many differentiated cells arranged into definite organs. Back
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33. For an explanation of this evolutionist view of history (where the earth’s 4.5-billion-year history is represented as a 24-hour clock), see Miller, Kenneth R., and Joseph S. Levine.
2010. Biology, p. 543. Boston: Pearson Education. Back
34. It might be objected that animals live and die today, and it is not equated with cruelty. So, why could not that be the case in the pre-Fall world? I would reply that animal death
today is not as God intended originally because it is an aspect of God’s just judgment of
His creation (which is now in bondage to corruption: Romans 8:19–23) because of the
rebellion of His highest creation, man. But in light of God’s prophecies about the future
state when animals will not be carnivores or dangerous to man, it is clear that the present
state of affairs is not as God wants it to remain. Also, the fossil record does not speak of
animals dying of old age. It speaks of massive, catastrophic death, even burial alive, of
billions of creatures (which is not happening even in today’s post-Fall creation). And the
problem is having all this carnage in a creation that was not cursed but called “very
good.” Back
35. It might be objected that God brought about the death and extinction of animals during the Flood, which is in the post-Fall period when God shows care for the animals. So, why
could not that be the case in the pre-Fall period? The reason is that the death and
extinction during the Flood was part of God’s Curse on the earth at the Flood (Genesis
8:21), but God never cursed His creation in the “very good” pre-Fall Creation Week.
Back
36. Hull, David. 1991. Review of Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial: “The God of the Galápagos,” Nature 352: 485–486. Back
37. Bugg, George.1826. Scriptural Geology vol. 1, pp. 318–319. London: Hatchard & Son. Bugg was one of many orthodox clergy and scientists who opposed the old-earth
geological theories and the various Christian compromises at that time. See Mortenson,
Terry. 2004. The Great Turning Point for a full discussion. Back
38. For a historical analysis of Luther’s, Calvin’s, Wesley’s, and the nineteenth century Scriptural geologists’ views on this subject in comparison to the views of old-earth
proponents in the early nineteenth century, see Ury, Thane H. “Luther, Calvin, and
Wesley on the Genesis of Natural Evil: Recovering Lost Rubrics for Defending a Very
Good Creation” in Mortenson and Ury, Coming to Grips, pp. 399–424. His fuller
discussion is Ury, Thane H. 2001. “The Evolving Face of God” (Ph.D. thesis, Andrews
University). Ury shows that the implied character of God arising from old-earth views is
historically unorthodox in the church. Back
39. See, for example, Parker, Gary. 2006. Creation: The Facts of Life. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books; Patterson, Roger. 2006. Evolution Exposed: Biology. Green
Forest, Arkansas: Master Books; Werner, Carl. 2007. Evolution: The Grand Experiment.
Green Forest, Arkansas: New Leaf Press; Sanford, John. 2005. Genetic Entropy. Lima,
New York: Ivan Press; Mortenson, Terry. 2006. Origin of the Species: Was Darwin
Right? DVD. Hebron, Kentucky: Answers in Genesis; Patterson, Roger. 2008. Evolution
Exposed: Earth Science, Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books; Snelling, Andrew. 2009.
Earth’s Catastrophic Past (2 volumes). El Cajon, California: ICR; Snelling, Andrew.
Geology: A Biblical Viewpoint on the Age of the Earth (5-DVD set of lectures). 2009.
Hebron, Kentucky: Answers in Genesis; Mortenson, Terry. 2006. Noah’s Flood:
Washing Away Millions of Years DVD. Hebron, Kentucky: Answers in Genesis; Lisle,
Jason. 2006. Taking Back Astronomy. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books; Faulkner,
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Danny. 2004. Universe by Design. Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books; Lisle, Jason.
2005. Distant Starlight: Not a Problem for a Young Universe DVD. Hebron, Kentucky:
Answers in Genesis. All these books and DVDs plus many articles dealing with the
scientific evidence are available at www.AnswersinGenesis.org/PublicStore/. Back