God Made the Box

[Chris]

God Made the Box

God Made the Box
By Nathan Jones

"The guest you've had on your TV show the past couple weeks is not one I can believe. He has God placed so in a box that in his finite mind he can't perceive a universe older than 6,000 years. The reason I have a problem with that is from the words of the Bible itself. Yes, I know the Genesis account very well. I've got three questions. Care to comment?" – James in Florida

James' email, along with a slew of other emails, came streaming into the ministry last September after we aired our "Christ in Prophecy" television show's four-part series titled Jobe Martin on Creationism and Evolution. Dr. Martin was a former dental professor and Evolutionist who having clearly seen God's eternal power and divine nature from what has been made came to faith in Jesus Christ and put his trust in the Bible's account of the six days of Creation. Through Biblical Discipleship Ministries, and their Nature Proclaims videos, he and his family teach all over the country that we can implicitly trust the Bible's account of the Creation.

Like Dr. Martin, I'm a believer in a young earth and so would in some circles be called a "Young-Earther." Our worldview here at Lamb & Lion Ministries is based on the idea that the earth and everything in the universe began a mere 6,000 years ago. It is not a wildly popular view - even among Christians - nevertheless I believe it is a biblically supported one.

I would respectfully disagree that taking the 6-day/24-hour Genesis account to be narrow minded, or that a young earth places God in a box whatsoever. So, for those who doubt that the earth could be young, I'd be happy to comment on James' three questions.

Three Questions

1) "When did Lucifer get thrown out of heaven? You know he had to be there before Eve chose to pick from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

This question is prompted by the Gap Theory. According to that theory, after God created the heavens and the earth, Satan rebelled and was cast down to earth. He made havoc of the creation, causing it to descend into chaos. Then, millions of years later, God re-created the universe, and that re-creation is what is recorded in Genesis chapter 1.

What this question is really getting at is, "When were the angels created?" The Bible does not tell us directly, but we are told in Job 38:4-7 that they rejoiced when God created the material universe. So, they must have pre-dated the creation.

But that does not mean that Satan and a third of the angels were cast from Heaven before the creation. There is no indication that Adam sinned the very next day after Eve was made, so there was plenty of time after the creation - maybe even decades - for Satan to lead a rebellion in Heaven and be cast down to the Garden.

2) "The dinosaurs are older than 6,000 years."

Who knows for sure that the dinosaurs are older than 6,000 years? Science requires observation in the scientific method to draw that conclusion, and nobody today is 6,000 years old.

The dinosaur stumbling block many face is because our modern mindset has been classifying dinosaurs as a separate group of extinct lizards since the 1800's. In times before the Theory of Evolution, they were just included as part of the whole animal kingdom. That's the way the Bible sees dinosaurs, and so it includes them in its description with the rest of the animals, like the Behemoth and Leviathan in Job.

Certainly, many of our dragon legends that exist in all cultures, developing in isolation from one another, show dinosaurs may have still been roaming the Earth even up until the 1500's. A few like the aquatic plesiosaur have been found even in the Twentieth Century!

3) "Why did God tell Adam and Eve to 'replenish' the earth? Does that mean it had been peopled beforehand?"

God in Genesis 1:28 commands mankind to be fruitful, and in the old King James version to "replenish" the earth. In other versions, Adam and Eve are told "to fill" the earth, because the Hebrew word alm does not mean to replenish. Rather, that word according to Strong's simply means "to fill." In fact, this very same word is used in Genesis 1:22 where the command is given by God to "fill the waters of the seas." Later versions of the Bible have rendered the verb properly as "to fill." Sadly, this mistranslation of alm to "replenish" is the very source of all these pre-Adamic theories today, like the Gap Theory that proposes a gap of millions or billions of years between Genesis 1 and 2.

Have Faith

So, where do we get the 6,000 as the number of years since the Creation? Dr. Martin explains that we get that amount by calculating from the Bible's genealogical tables.

The Bible is God's Word teaching us what He wishes to reveal to us. It's also the foundation for our faith in and understanding of our Savior. Anything outside of the Bible is wild speculation based on man's own imagination and limited view of the universe. While there is much that God has yet to reveal to us, we should not speculate beyond exactly what the Bible teaches. The Bible gives us 6,000 years and so 6,000 years is what I will believe.

[KissimmeeBeliever]

This is similar to when my waivering wife asked me then why isn't there any mention of things like dinosaurs and such in the Bible? I asked her what kind of impact would that have made on her life? The Bible isn't a word for word history book it is there to teach us the way to live for G-d, for hope, and so on. It seems to me that the people needing answers to these types of questions really are missing the point of The Bible and focusing on the wrong things.