Evidences for a Young Earth (2 Peter 3:1-9)

Evidences for a Young Earth
2 Peter 3:1-9

INTRODUCTION:
When the girls were little and we lived in Romania, one of our coworkers had the animated film series Land Before Time. Once you got past the first monologue, it was a really cute series of cartoons. Up until 2016, there were 14 movies.

The monologue, and I think it was the same for every film, at the opening of the movie said this: “Once upon this same earth, beneath this same sun, long before you… before the ape and the elephant as well, before the wolf, the bison, the whale, before the mammoth and the mastodon in the time of the dinosaurs.”

Satan is extremely insidious. Through this series of animated films as well as a host of others, as well as books and magazines, Satan influences our children to believe that the earth is billions of years old (according to the American Museum of Natural History - 4.543 billion years old) and that man has come along about 2 million years ago and man as we know him (Homo sapiens) is about 300,000 years old.

If that is true, then the Bible is false. If the Bible is false, then Jesus is false. If Jesus is false, there is no resurrection. If there is no resurrection, then we are of all men most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:19). It is unfortunate that many Christians have drank from the Kool-Aid of men in white lab coats and decided that the earth is billions of years old and Jesus is also our Savior. The problem is that you can’t take both positions and be honest with God’s word. Jesus places the creation of mankind at the very beginning of the world: Matthew 19:4. Paul refers to Adam as the “first man” (Romans 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:45).

For “theistic evolutionists” to want to accept the idea that the earth is billions of years old and Genesis is not literal history but to also accept Jesus’ teachings is illogical, irrational, and inconsistent. Jesus put the creation of man at the beginning of the creation; either Jesus:

1) Was a liar.
2) Did not know Genesis was not literal history.
3) Accommodated Himself to the false beliefs of the Jews of His time (who believed Genesis was literal history) - but in the process, He perpetuated a false concept.

Do you really want to take either of those positions?

We do not have time to do a thorough discussion of the age of the earth, but I want to present some ideas which will help us accept the idea that the earth is as young as the Bible presents it to be. I had an article in our church bulletin a few months ago about the flaws in the dating of rocks and Carbon-14 dating. I can get you a copy of that bulletin article if you would like to have it.

First, let’s briefly point out how old the earth is according to the Bible…

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE?
If you look at Luke 3, beginning in verse 23, you will notice that Luke gives the genealogy of Jesus Christ. At the time Jesus began His ministry, He was about 30 years old and was believed to be the son of Joseph of Nazareth, the son of Eli. Notice that Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back throughout OT history, all the way back to Genesis. King David is mentioned in verse 31; Judah, in verse 33; Abraham in verse 34; Noah in verse 36. Now notice verse 38: “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

So Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Seth, Adam, and God. Just like the book of Genesis tells us. Genesis is history; it’s the history of mankind for the first few thousand years of history. Now, it is absolutely true that the Bible does not tell us how old the earth is. But, clearly from this genealogy, we can know that the earth is not millions of years old, much less billions of years old. There is no way you can fit millions, billions, or even hundreds of thousands of years into Jesus’ genealogy! There is no way and be honest with Jesus’ words.

Now, some people say: “The genealogies weren’t intended to present a chronology of earth history.” Well, how do you know that? How do you know that we can’t get a general idea of the age of the earth by using the genealogies? In Genesis 5, Moses explicitly tells us how old the dad was when the son was born. That does not give us an exact age for the earth, but Adam lived a total of 930 years before he died. This whole genealogy puts the earth at a few thousand years old but not much more than that.

Then some people say: “Well, there are gaps in the genealogies.” Well, how do you know that, unless there are other genealogies that fill in the gaps? And, again, even if there are gaps, there are still not enough gaps to squeeze tens of thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years into the biblical time frame. It just won’t work.

Abraham, as Moses presents his life, is easily dated around 2,000 BC - during the middle Bronze Age. So, it’s been roughly 2,000 years from us back to the time of Jesus; then 2,000 years from Jesus back to the time of Abraham. Bible chronology and the list of genealogies would stretch about 2,000 years from Abraham back to Adam. Incidentally, in Jude 14, the brother of Jesus states that “Enoch” was the 7th generation from Adam, which shows there are no gaps between Enoch and Adam and Genesis is literal history

THE AGE OF CIVILIZATION:
Atheistic anthropologists date civilization to around 5,000 BC. That is about the time that written history started. Well, there was written history before Moses came along. Moses knew about the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when Moses was in Egypt. He had God’s word written down for him.

Notice Genesis 4:21 - Jubal was the “father” of those who play the lyre and the pipe. What is your definition of “civilization?” If it includes music, then we have evidence of “civilization” here in the earliest chapters of Genesis. In verse 22, Tubal-cain was the “forger of all implements of bronze and iron.” If the manufacture and use of tools made from metals is a part of “civilization,” then we have “civilization” here in chapter 4. If “worship” among humans is evidence of civilization, then Cain and Abel were worshipping in chapter 3.

So, the Bible still presents the history of the earth and mankind as dating from the beginning of civilization, which came about when man was created on the sixth day of the week of creation. And man is only 6 days younger than the earth itself.

POPULATION STATISTICS:
There are estimated 7.88 billion people on earth today. For a long time, the growth rate of humans was 2% each year; it has back down to 1% per year today. At 2%, it would take a little over 1,000 years to reach the number of people we have today, starting with a single pair (Adam and Eve). Obviously, there are many factors that impact that growth rate.

But what it does show is that there are not enough people on earth today for a human population to be 300,000 years old! If humans had been on earth for 1 million years, at an annual growth rate of 2%, there would be 108600 people on earth today! (That’s 10 followed by 8,600 zeroes!)

THE FOSSIL RECORD:
Let’s take a moment to examine the fossil record…

95% of all fossils are marine fossils with no backbone (invertebrates) - most of those are shellfish
Of the other 5%, 95% of those are algae and plant fossils
Of the remaining 5% of that number, 0.25% are other invertebrates (not “marine”), including insects
The remaining 0.0125% of the remaining fossils are organisms with backbones, mostly fish! Very few land vertebrates have been found and most of those are only one bone per specimen! Children are especially enthralled with the dinosaur… while many dinosaur bone fragments have been found, they represent only about 1200 dinosaur skeletons!

But let’s talk about human fossils… If man - or “prehistoric man” - were on earth for 1 million years, imagine how many skeletons would be buried in the soil after all this time? If humans are the last organism to have evolved, then the “top soil,” the top layer of earth where skeletons are found should be full of human skeletons!

But human fossil remains are relatively scarce. One scientist estimates that the number of human fossil remains could fit on top of a pool table. Another estimates that they could all fit inside a good-size box! According to the Smithsonian Institution’s webpage on Human Origins, the human fossil record represents only about 6,000 individuals. Where is the evidence that trillions upon trillions of human beings have lived, if mankind is a million years old?

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCES FOR A YOUNG EARTH:
If you read my bulletin article, you see there are serious flaws in the dating methods that suggest the earth is billions of years old. Some of those flaws can apply to scientific evidences that the earth is young; we need to be honest with the evidence. But, at a minimum, the fact that there is contradictory evidence on the age of the earth should warn Christians not to be too hasty in ignoring what God actually says in the Bible relative to the age of the earth…

The earth, as you know, as a dipolar magnetic field, with north and south poles. This field is due to an electromagnet which is produced at the heart of the earth. This magnetic field reflects harmful radiation back into outer space.

This magnetic field has been measurably decaying over the last 150 years. This magnetic field has been measured since 1835. What scientists have discovered is that the magnetic field’s strength drops in half every 1400 years. So, the strength was higher in the past; it is getting weaker as we move into the future.

Geophysicists tell us that if the earth were, say, 20,000 years old, then the magnetic field would have been too strong and the heat produced by it would have disrupted the internal structure of the earth and life could not have evolved, much less thrived.

Let’s present another one… the amount of helium in the atmosphere. Helium is a very lightweight gas and it is found in our atmosphere in measurable quantities. It is produced beneath the earth’s surface from radioactive decay. Scientists know how much helium is in our atmosphere and they know how much is being added to the atmosphere, and they know how much is escaping into space! At this rate, it would take 2 million years for our atmosphere to have all the helium in it that it presently has. - And that’s assuming that nothing has changed over the past several thousand years - but of course, we know that the flood broke open the depths of the seas, which could easily have added even more helium into the atmosphere at a very rapid rate. That would make the earth even younger than 2 million years and if God created our atmosphere as it is today for the use of humans and animals, then the first atmosphere already had helium in it! That would make the earth even younger.

Here’s the broader point… if the earth was 4.5 billion years old, there would be a whole lot more helium in the atmosphere - so much so that life could not thrive and exist. Life forms cannot breathe pure helium.

Here’s yet another evidence… as you know, salt flows in rivers and streams and ends up in the ocean. If the world, if the oceans, were billions of years old, the whole world would be one huge Dead Sea. When Ana went to the Bible lands a few weeks ago, she floated in the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea has a salinity of 34%. There’s not a lot of life that can live in the Dead Sea, thus it’s name. The salinity of ocean water…? 3.5%.

Without getting into the details, there are 11 processes that put salt into the ocean. There are 7 processes by which salt is removed from the ocean. These rates can be measured and then the age of the ocean can be estimated - assuming nothing has changed over the years! All the salt in the oceans would have accumulated in about 62 million years. That’s older than what the Bible allows, clearly. But here’s my point - it is considerably younger than the 4.5 billion years that evolutionists tell us. What I’m trying to emphasize is this: scientific evidences for an old earth is unreliable! There are too many assumptions that scientists have to make - again look at my bulletin article - for these evidences to be trustworthy enough to set aside what God’s word has to say on the subject.

DOES IT REALLY MATTER?
Of course it matters! Anything that undermines our confidence in the word of God is a tool of Satan. Why should I believe what the Bible says in Genesis 12 if I can’t believe what the Bible says in Genesis 1?

The whole Christian faith is built on three teachings: the existence of God, the deity of Christ, and the inspiration of the Bible. Suggesting that the earth is billions of years old and that mankind is hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of years old undermines our conviction that the Bible is God speaking to us about His creation, its origin, its purpose, and its destiny.

Dr. Kurt Wise is a Protestant who earned his PhD in paleontology from Harvard. He grew up in a faith-based home but when he started doing graduate work, his faith came under attack. He decided he would read through the Bible and literally cut out every verse which referred to the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. When he finished, his Bible - as you can imagine - was in shreds. That’s why it makes a difference!

Take home message: The earth was created for man (Isa. 45:18) to form us into the image of Christ (Gal. 4:19) so that we might be worthy of heaven (2 Thess. 1:5). Let’s trust God’s voice when it comes to its age, its purpose, and its destiny (2 Peter 3:10).