The following is taken from the book "The New Answers Book" by Ken Ham, and continues from last week's comment.
" Refuting Common Objections to Six Literal days.
Objection 1 - "Science" has shown the earth and universe are billions of years old; therefore the "days" of creation must be long periods (or infinite) periods of time.
Answer - A - The age of the earth as determined by man's fallible methods, is based on unproven assumptions, so it is not proven that the earth is billions of years old.
B - This unproven age is being used to force an interpretation on the language of the Bible. Thus, man's fallible theories are allowed to interpret the Bible. This ultimately undermines the use of language to communicate.
C - Evolutionary scientists claim the fossil layers over the earth's surface date back hundreds of millions of years. As soon as one allows millions of years for the fossil layers, then one has accepted death, bloodshed, disease, thorns, and suffering before Adam's sin.
The Bible made it clear that death, bloodshed, disease, thorns, and suffering are a "consequence" of sin. In Genesis 1:28-30, God gave Adam and Eve and the animals plants to eat (this is reading Genesis at face value, as literal history, as Jesus did in Matthew 19:3-6). In fact, there is a theological distinction made between animals and plants. Human beings are higher animals are described in Genesis 1 as having a "nephesh", or life principle. (This is true of at least the vertebrate land animals as well as the birds and fish: Genesis 1:20,24.) Plants do not have this "nephesh" - they are not "alive" in the same sense animals are. They were given for food.
Man was permitted to eat meat only after the Flood (Genesis 9:3. This makes it obvious that the statements in Genesis 1:29-30 were meant to inform us that man and the animals were vegetarian to start with. Also, in Genesis 9:2, we are told of a change God apparently made in the way animals react to man.
God warned Adam in Genesis 2:17 that if he ate the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" he would "die." The Hebrew grammar actually means, "dying, you will die." In other words, it would be the commencement of a process of physical dying (see Genesis 3:19). It also clearly involved spiritual death (separation from God).
After Adam disobeyed God, the Lord clothed Adam and Eve with "coats of skins" (Genesis 3:21. To do this He must have killed and shed the blood of at least one animal. The reason for this can be summed up by Hebrews 9:22: "And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission."
God requires the shedding of blood for the remission of sins. What happened in the garden was a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ, who shed His blood on the Cross as the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
Now if the Garden of Eden were sitting on a fossil record of dead things millions of years old, then blood was shed "before" sin. This would destroy the foundation of the Atonement. The Bible is clear: the sin of Adam brought death and suffering into the world. As Romans 8:19-22 tells us, the whole of creation "groans" because of the effects of the fall of Adam, and the creation will be liberated "from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). Also, bear in mind that thorns came into existence after the Curse. Because there are thorns in the fossil record, it had to be formed after Adam and Eve sinned.
The pronouncement of the death penalty on Adam was both a curse and a blessing. A curse because death is horrible and continually reminds us of the ugliness of sin; a blessing because it meant the consequences of sin - separation from fellowship with God - need not be eternal. Death stopped Adam and his descendants from living in a state of sin, with all its consequences, forever. And because death was the just penalty for sin, Jesus Christ suffered physical death, shedding His blood, to release Adam's descendants from the consequences of sin. The Apostle Paul discusses this in depth in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.
Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that there will be a "new heavens and a new earth" one day, where there will be "no more death" and "no more curse" - just like it was before sin changed everything. If there are to be animals as part of the new earth, obviously they will not be dying or eating each other, nor eating the redeemed people!
Thus, adding the supposed millions of years to Scripture destroys the foundations of the message of the Cross. "
Click here for a different opinion about evolution and the age of the earth with this article from AboutBibleProphecy.com: Does the theory of evolution truly conflict with the Bible?
By George Konig
8/26/2007
www.georgekonig.org
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