According to the Bible, How Old Is the Earth? How Important Is This?

The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety. 

The Bible doesn’t say how old the earth is. We know that God made it specially. We know he made it in an amazing way—He spoke, and the worlds were made. So, everything that scientist would look at for the ages of the earth are not the things we Christians have our faith tied up in. there will be all kinds of things we do not know.

Sometimes, people will say “if there are all these signs of age how deceptive that would be if we are not really old.” Well, if you really want to get onto that level there are many other classic questions. Did Adam have a navel? Was the sunlight already there or did we have to wait eight and half minutes? Could you see stars, or did you need to wait a few thousand years? Of course, when God makes things, they are adult. There are things which you can call “signs of age” or call them “deceptive” because they are there, or you can say that God made a complete operating system. He made us with minds to understand so we are looking at things to understand how things grow, how trees and rings grow. So, I’m not persuaded that it is deceptive to say that there is a young earth and yet there are legitimate signs of age all around.

Look, science has changed throughout my lifetime. I am only a few decades old, and science right now says something different about this than it said 50 years ago. What I am saying about God making the earth, but we don’t know the exact date, but he is also going to end it and destroy it. He is our Creator; He is our Judge. Those things Christians were saying 50 years ago and 500 years ago and they are still true, and we are still going to be saying them. So, I want to keep the focus on the main thing: who God is, and what He has told us we need to do—repent of our sins and trust in Him. What we need to believe about Jesus if we are to be reconciled to Him, to know our Creator and not just facts about the Creation.

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