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Sunday School

Lesson 16: Young Earth, Six-Day Creationism, Overview

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Greg Ho

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Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.

Summary

The authority and trustworthiness of Scripture is at stake in how we understand the creation account in Genesis. We are reminded that the plain reading of Genesis 1, the fourth commandment, the Genesis genealogies, the testimony of Jesus and the apostles, the global flood, and the problem of death before the fall all point to a young earth created in six literal 24-hour days. We are called to trust God’s Word over the ever-changing theories of secular science.

Key Lessons:

  1. Origin science is not true science—it is a philosophy built on untestable assumptions, and it should not be treated as settled fact that overrides Scripture.
  2. The plain reading of Genesis 1, with its use of ordinal numbers and the phrase “evening and morning,” clearly indicates six literal 24-hour days of creation.
  3. Jesus and the apostles consistently placed humanity at the beginning of creation, leaving no room for billions of years before Adam.
  4. Death, suffering, cancer, and thorns are part of the curse and did not exist before the fall—this is an intractable theological problem for old-earth views.

Application: We are called to trust God’s Word as more reliable than any human scientific theory, to approach Genesis with a consistent literal-grammatical hermeneutic, and to be equipped to answer questions about creation when sharing the gospel with others who see evolution as a barrier to faith.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does our view of Genesis 1 affect the way we interpret the rest of Scripture and the trustworthiness of God’s character?
  2. Why is the problem of death before the fall such a serious theological issue, and how does it relate to the hope of the new creation?
  3. How can we lovingly and effectively engage with people—both inside and outside the church—who hold to old-earth or evolutionary views?

Scripture Focus: Genesis 1 (six days of creation), Exodus 20:8-11 and 31:16-17 (fourth commandment and covenant), Genesis 5 and 11 (genealogies from Adam to Abraham), Mark 10:6 and Romans 1:18-20 (Jesus and Paul affirming creation’s beginning), Genesis 7:19 and 9:11 (global flood), Genesis 3:17 (the curse), and 2 Peter 3:3-7 (mockers and uniformitarianism).

Outline

Introduction

Okay, here we go. All right, welcome to Adult Sunday School. I know there are some of the teens coming up.

So, welcome teens. Thank you for coming up for what we think is going to be four weeks or guess six weeks of topics that are pertinent to not only the adults, but also especially people who are in school and in the world and trying to figure everything out.

Let’s start out with a word of prayer and then we will dive into this topic.

Father, we are so grateful for your provision to us that we get to come here this Sunday that we did not have yet another Sunday of not being able to come to your house to worship. Thank you Lord for all the people you’ll bring into today.

I pray Lord that the gospel would be preached, your word would be preached, that people would even come to Christ and pray that you would keep everybody safe from the storm. You are a sovereign God. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

All right.

Personal Testimony: Why This Topic Matters

Six day creationism. This is one of the topics that is most dear to my heart. First, I’ll start out by saying that, as with a lot of these topics, agreeing with us on six day creationism is not necessarily a requirement for membership. It’s not a requirement to be saved that you believe these things.

However, I also don’t think that is unimportant. In fact, I think it’s a very important topic. I’ll give you a little bit of my personal testimony about this before we start.

I grew up in a home that was mostly atheistic. My mom sort of went to church, but it wasn’t a very good church. I didn’t really hear the gospel. My dad is a professor and a secular scientist. This is how I grew up. I believed very much in evolution, in what I was being taught in public school.

I went to college, and after a certain series of events, I found myself in a church. This was basically my senior year of college, and I was in a church for maybe the first time in years. Through some series of events, I came to really like these people at the church. I saw something different in them. They had joy and they had purpose. At the time, I had neither of those things.

But it took me about six months of struggle. The reason I could not come to Christ for at least six months, maybe more, is because of this topic. I grew up being convinced that the world was created through evolutionary processes, through the big bang.

When I heard a different origin story in church, I was left with this decision: Should I believe in a myth? If they’re wrong about this, then how could I believe anything else they say?

This is what Jesus says in John 3:12. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? If the Bible and Jesus is wrong about things of the earth or even how the earth is created, then why should you believe when Jesus tells you anything about heaven?

I was really in this state. I could not come to Christ. I thought it was a myth. I thought it was a crutch for people who needed some sort of emotional stability. You can believe this myth if you would like, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

But one day I really came to the end of myself. I fell on my knees and I said to God, “Listen, I can’t believe any of this because obviously evolution is true. So listen, if you want me to be a Christian, then convince me that creationism is true. Convince me that you created the heavens and the earth in the way that you laid out in the scriptures.”

John 3:12: “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”

I went to bed that night convinced fully of evolution. I woke up in the morning convinced fully that evolution was a lie. I woke up and I believed.

And that’s how I became a Christian.

Fortresses Against the Knowledge of God

People who say that this topic doesn’t matter don’t understand that there are millions of people just like me who have been brainwashed by the world. In fact, 2 Corinthians 10:4 says this: “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

This topic of origin—how the world came to be, evolution, the big bang, and all of these things—these are the fortresses, or at least one of the fortresses, erected against the knowledge of God. I know this from personal experience.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5: “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.”

Millions of people have made this logical connection: if we can’t trust God for the earthly things, why should we trust him for the heavenly things? Sadly, they refuse to trust in Christ because they do not believe the Bible is true from the beginning.

The question before us today is this: do we believe God and what he says, or do we believe secular scientists and what they say? Those are the only two choices. If you believe the secular scientists, then I tell you that you probably shouldn’t come to Christ because if the Bible doesn’t get the origin story right, why would you believe it about anything else?

So, why do I believe in six day creationism?

What Is Real Science?

Let’s start really quickly. We’re going to go through this fast. What is science really? Lots of people today live in a scientific age. We have phones in our pockets that work because of science. Everything in the world seems to work because of science. But what is science?

Well, science—if everybody has been through high school, you know something about the scientific method, right? The scientific method is like this: you have a hypothesis. Then you use that hypothesis to come up with an experiment. From that experiment, you collect data. Maybe this is a loop that takes a while, and that’s why people get PhDs. Then you report your conclusions and maybe you come up with a different hypothesis.

This is the scientific method. Now I should just say that many of you maybe don’t know me very well, but I have my PhD from Princeton University. I studied there for eight years, and ever since then I’ve been in some sort of scientific discipline. So I know something about the scientific method, and what I can tell you is that this is what real science has to be, right?

Real science has to be testable. That means it’s subject to experimental verification. If you come out with a hypothesis, you have to be able to test it, but you also have to be able to test it repeatedly. Real scientists—people who are doing real science with the scientific method—are not going to just have one experiment and have that accepted. Nobody’s going to believe you. So you’re going to have to be able to repeat it. Multiple scientists all around the world have to be able to replicate it.

And it has to be falsifiable. What that means is if somebody shows you an experimental result that disproves your theory, you have to say, “Okay, well the theory is false.” So if it’s not those things, then it’s not using the scientific method, and we would say it’s not really science.

“Real science has to be testable, repeatable, and falsifiable.”

One thing to really understand about science is that the way the scientific method works is based on skepticism. Skepticism is good because it is valued and welcome. That’s how you come up with new hypotheses. That’s how you disprove your hypothesis and come up with new ones.

What Is Origin Science?

Okay. But what is origin science? Origin science is not any of those things.

Okay? Origin science works more like this. You have your set of assumptions.

Maybe you assume that there is no God or you assume that there is no supernatural intervention. You come up with some observations, and then with those assumptions and those observations, you report your conclusions. There’s no testing, there’s no verification. You can’t actually do tests if you think about it because you can’t time travel back in time.

You can’t see how these things came to be. You can look at a rock and say maybe this is how it came to be, but you can’t actually go back and see that.

Origin science is not really science.

In fact, what it is, is a philosophy.

“Origin science is not really science. What it is, is a philosophy.”

It is not testable. It’s not repeatable, and it’s not falsifiable.

How Origin Science Is Defended

And because it’s a philosophy, because it’s not a science, you have to defend it. See, like real science, you don’t have to defend, right? You can just create a phone and you can be like, “Look, it works.” But origin science, you have to defend.

How do you defend it? First of all, you have to stamp out skepticism, right? You have to enforce it with thought compliance.

The way that’s been done in the United States and throughout the world is you first teach it as a settled fact in grade school textbooks from the beginning when they first come out as a babe to adulthood. You teach them your version of origin science. And then you ridicule them when they disagree. You tell them that everybody who disagrees is not a real scientist or they’re anti-science.

“You enforce it with thought compliance—teach it as settled fact and ridicule those who disagree.”

For professors in academia who disagree, of which there are many actually, you don’t know this. They always tell you that 100% of scientists agree. And that’s never true, right? First of all, I disagree and I’m a scientist. I know many others.

So you deny them funding, you don’t give them tenure, you don’t allow them to progress through the ranks. Guys, we’ve seen this playbook before, haven’t we? In fact, this is not just the only time it’s been used. Even through all of the things that have happened in the last years, we have seen this playbook before.

The Church Has Been Confused

This is not surprising to you. But what you also have to realize is that the church has been successfully confused. They’ve been very successful in this campaign, and many people in the church—I would say in fact I think the statistics are—we’re in the minority.

Churches who believe in six-day creationism are the minority. If you walk into a church in America, you are much more likely to hold one of these compromised views. We’re not going to talk about too many of these things in specific today. If you have questions, please send them to me.

But all of them have one thing in common: they try to insert millions of years into Genesis, maybe billions of years into Genesis. So why did the church do this? Well, I think at the end of the day, we have to say the problem that the church faced is because this campaign was so effective.

We didn’t want to be labeled anti-science. We didn’t want to be labeled stupid. So we tried to put science into Genesis. We tried to reinterpret Genesis in light of science.

Now, there are two reasons that this is bad. There are two reasons why this is a losing game. First of all, if you actually do science, you understand that science is not a static thing. It’s not something that just is set and never changes. Science changes all the time.

Even recently, people are still revising theories about, for example, the big bang and all these things that have been disproven by recent data. People just simply take that and revise their theory to accommodate that data. This is not science.

Not only that, the second reason why this is a losing game is because if you try to say, “Let’s interpret the scriptures in light of science.

“Churches who believe in six-day creationism are the minority.”

An Inconsistent Hermeneutic

Let’s only let in what is scientifically reasonable.” Then you have an inconsistent hermeneutic.

One of the first lessons in this Sunday school was something about how to interpret the Bible, right? The way you interpret the Bible is you approach the Bible in a grammatical, literal, historical grammatical way. That means you look at the Bible and you say what did this mean at the time to the people it was written for, right? And it means one thing and that’s it.

But you’ve now taken Genesis and you’ve done something different with it. You’re trying to interpret it in light of some prevailing scientific theories. And that is an inconsistent hermeneutic because, actually, if you’re a Christian, you believe in many things already that are incompatible with science, right?

So if you want your beliefs to be compatible with science, this is what you have to not believe. You have to not believe that there was a giant fish that swallowed a man and he survived that and he was ejected three days later. You have to not believe that the sun actually stood still for a day.

You have to not believe that people are raised from the dead. That’s not scientifically possible. You have to not believe that water was made into wine or food was created out of nothing. Somebody’s ear was miraculously reattached. You have to not believe that Jesus will come back in a miraculous way through from the sky. And you have to not believe in a fiery judgment.

Okay, those are just a few things that you have to not believe if you want your view of scripture to be interpreted through science.

“If you want your beliefs compatible with science, you must not believe people are raised from the dead.”

Let God Be True

I think this is really the summary of how we should approach this topic. What does the Bible say?

Romans 3:4 says, “Let God be true though every man be found a liar.” We have to realize that science is a construct basically. The philosophy of science is a construct of man and it changes all the time, but God’s word never changes. That’s where we have to start.

Romans 3:4: “Let God be true though every man be found a liar.”

Six Reasons for Young Earth Creationism

In the rest of this time, I’m going to give you six reasons to believe in young earth creationism.

First, the plain reading of Genesis 1 is six 24-hour days. I don’t think that you can approach that text honestly and say that it says anything different. There’s nothing in there that would cause you to interpret it with millions of years.

“You cannot approach that text honestly and say it says anything different than six 24-hour days.”

Secondly, there’s the problem of the fourth commandment. The fourth commandment shows that God himself seems to be a young earth creationist.

Third, there’s the problem of Genesis genealogies. If you look at the Genesis genealogies, you see that there’s no room for long ages after Adam. But if you look at what Jesus and the apostles say, then you realize that there’s no room for long ages before Adam either.

If you can show that there’s no room for long ages from creation to Adam and then from Adam to Abraham, then there’s no room for long ages anywhere.

Fourth, there’s the global flood. If you are a Christian who believes in a global flood, as I think you must if you look at the scriptures honestly, that is incompatible with long ages.

Finally, there is the problem of death before the fall. This is a very significant issue, and in fact I know people personally who have not come to Christ because of this. If you are a long ages believer, then you most likely believe in death before the fall. And this is an intractable theological problem.

Reason 1: The Plain Reading of Genesis 1

Play reading of Genesis 1, also known as just read it like the original audience would have understood it. Okay, six 24-hour days. Now, it might help you today if you have a Bible in front of you to open to these passages. I’m not going to try to spend a lot of time doing that during the class because there’s just too much to go through and I want to see whether I can maybe end a little bit early and leave some time for interaction.

But here’s the first reason why I think you should be a sixth day creationist.

So the plain readings of Genesis 1. I know this is kind of an eye chart. It’s a little hard to see. If you want to look at your Bible, this will help you a little bit in Genesis 1:1, but I’m just going to tell you some of the highlights. Okay?

So Genesis 1:3-5. I left out some of these things from ellipsis just for the sake of time. “Let there be light. And there was evening and there was morning one day.” If you go to verse 6, it says, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters. And there was evening and there was morning a second day.”

Genesis 1:9-13: “Let the dry land appear and there was evening and morning a third day.” Verses 14-19, it goes on. Okay? So, evening, morning, a fourth day. Evening, morning, a fifth day. Evening, morning, a sixth day.

#### What Does the Word ‘Day’ Mean?

So, if you read this, you understand it’s evening and it’s morning and it’s a day, right? That’s what a day is. It’s an evening, it’s morning, and it’s a day.

Now, a lot of the debate about these passages comes down to what the word day means. What does the word day mean? The word day is the Hebrew word yom, right? Day of atonement is yom kippur. So yom is the word for day.

And just like in English, the word can sometimes mean figurative things. A good example is this sentence. Back in my grandfather’s day, it took 10 days to drive across America during the day.

So I used the word day in that sentence three different ways. And that’s not too different than Hebrew. However, we can tell which way it’s being used through context, right?

Just like we could tell in that sentence how I was using the word day in each of those sentences.

Back in my grandfather’s day, it took 10 days to drive across America during the day. How do I know that 10 days was 10 literal 24-hour days and not 10 million years? Well, because I said 10 days. I wouldn’t have said 10 days if I meant 10 million years, right?

And that actually is one of the ways we know in Hebrew. If you look through the Bible, if there’s an ordinal number by that word day—first day, second day, third day, fourth day—then always, 100% of the time, that’s talking about a literal 24-hour day.

“If there’s an ordinal number by the word day—first, second, third—100% of the time it’s a literal 24-hour day.”

#### Evening and Morning Confirm Literal Days

But how else do we know? Well, it’s almost as if why did he even say evening and morning here? He could have just left that out.

But every time you see evening and morning in Scripture, it is talking about a literal 24-hour day.

“Every time you see evening and morning in Scripture, it is talking about a literal 24-hour day.”

And this makes perfect sense. If it’s 10 million years, where’s the evening and where’s the morning? That doesn’t even make any sense, right?

In fact, if you read Genesis 1 in conclusion, you really have no idea where these millions of years come from.

This has to be injected into the text. And in fact, it turns out—you can ask Pastor Dave later—that God could have used different Hebrew words if he meant long ages. He could have, but he used the word day.

#### The Order of Creation Contradicts Evolution

Okay. The other thing I want to say about this is the order of creation makes no sense. If you try to stuff it into some sort of evolutionary theory, it just doesn’t make any sense. Even if you can get this to be long ages, even if you can get every day to be, say, 10 million years or something, it still doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s basically a cartoon of this. You have Earth, space, time, and light. First day, second day atmosphere, third day dry land. Fourth day, sun, moon, and stars. You have some problems here.

If these are 10 million years, firstly, you have the fact that the sun isn’t even created until day four. But you seem to have plants before that. So that doesn’t really make sense, right? It doesn’t even make sense that the sun is sort of created after light. That doesn’t make sense either.

What else doesn’t make sense? Well, if you have a long period of time before the plants and then the animals, here’s a problem. Many species on the earth have a very tight symbiosis between animals and plants. Think about that in terms of bees, right? How do bees and flowers pollinate? Well, they pollinate because bees go and they take the pollen.

If you have plants and then you have millions of years and then you have animals, then you have some problems here. How does that even work? There’s one last problem: you have birds on day five and you have land animals on day six. But that’s not what evolutionary theory says, right?

Evolutionary theory says that birds evolved from dinosaurs and dinosaurs are land animals. So there’s no way the order of creation can accommodate evolutionary theory. You can’t put that in there. You have to basically say this entire thing is allegorical and you have to throw out even the order. You have to throw out the days and you have to throw out the order.

“You have to throw out the days and you have to throw out the order to accommodate evolutionary theory.”

Okay. So that’s my first point.

Reason 2: The Fourth Commandment

The second point, the second reason why you should believe in six day creationism is the fourth commandment.

The subtext here is that it sure seems like God is a sixth day creationist. Now, what is the fourth commandment?

Well, six days you shall labor. This is in Exodus 20. And you shall do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle.

So what is the sixth commandment? The sixth commandment is you should keep the Sabbath day holy. But why do you keep the Sabbath day holy? For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. That’s the reason given.

Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them.”

The sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The whole reason is like God actually didn’t have to give a reason at all. He could have just said nothing. He just said, “Keep that day holy. Thus says the Lord.” But he gave you some color. He gave you some reason. This is the reason: the Lord made the world in six days.

And if you want to interpret this as millions of years, what does this even mean? Like, why would he even say this? Does this mean that we have to work for six million years and then rest for one million years? Like, this is a very strange thing for the Lord to say.

But it gets a little worse than that because if you go to the Exodus 31 version of the fourth commandment, the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the son of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth.

#### God’s Covenant Requires Literal Days

Now, what’s going on here? He is making a covenant with Israel. This is a deal.

I recently went and bought a car, and they made me sign basically half an hour of papers. Caleb was there with me, and it was just like, “Did you see the sticker on the car?” It’s like, “Okay, fine.” Everything in there has to be true. If there’s something that’s false in that contract, then one of us is in breach of covenant, right? One of us is in breach of contract.

But this is what is in the contract: that God made the heavens and the earth in six days. Now, would you give somebody a contract and say something, but it’s allegorical? It’s like you didn’t mean that, right? This actually calls into question the character of God. Would God make a deal or a contract or a covenant in which what is in there—the reason the covenant even exists—is not true?

“Would God make a covenant in which the very reason the covenant exists is not true?”

This is a huge problem. Is God lying?

The other thing to notice here is that God actually did it this way. Some people ask, well, why didn’t God just snap and let it be created in a moment?

It seems like the reason is right here. God actually did it that way in six days as an example to Israel. So it would be a bit hollow if that example was fake, right? If that example was sort of allegorical.

It’s like if I tell my kids to go and clean your room. Look, this is how I do it. This is how I clean my room. And then they walk into my room and it’s like a huge disaster.

Reason 3: The Genesis Genealogies

It’s like, well, my dad—like, I don’t know what you mean here. What do you mean clean your room? Okay, I hope that makes sense.

All right, let’s go to reason number three. We have a guy named Dave Caposhia who taught a bunch of Sunday schools a few years ago, focused on these Genesis genealogies.

You can go back in our Calvary archives if you want to see that. I’m not going to be able to go through as much detail here, but the point is that these Genesis genealogies are not like any other genealogies in the Bible.

If you look hard enough at these genealogies, there’s just no room to put millions of years between Adam and Abraham, and by extension, Jesus.

“These genealogies leave no room to put millions of years between Adam and Abraham.”

#### Adam Must Be a Real Person

All right. Before we get into the Genesis genealogies, you might be asking me this question. You might be saying, okay, you say there’s no room between Adam and Abraham, but how do I even know that Adam is a real person?

This might be a question in your mind. Maybe Adam is some sort of allegory or figure, like a metaphor or something. But if you look at some of these theological points, you’ll understand that if you believe Adam was not a real person, you have some real theological problems. You have problems that are almost like, maybe you shouldn’t even be a Christian problems. Why did God actually have to come to the earth and die? There’s no justification for that.

So Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as one man sin entered through the world and death reigned through sin, death reigned from Adam until Moses.” And then it says, “Just as through one man sin entered the world, death through sin.” So salvation, right? Everybody. There’s almost like an equation between Adam and Jesus.

If there’s no Adam, if Adam is figurative, maybe Jesus is figurative. And from this verse, if Adam is figurative, maybe Moses is figurative. Maybe everybody’s figurative. Maybe you’re figurative, right? What are you going to do with this? These people are real. They’re real people. Adam is as real as Moses and as Christ.

This is a similar verse: 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. “The first man, Adam, became a living person. The last man, the last Adam was a life-giving spirit. The first man is from the earth, earthly. The second man is from heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.” If Adam is figurative, who are you bearing the image of exactly?

“Adam is as real as Moses and as Christ. Otherwise the gospel doesn’t make sense.”

Adam must be as real as Moses or as Jesus. Otherwise, the gospel kind of doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So Adam is real.

In fact, you could turn your Bibles if you’d like to Genesis 5. I’m not going to read a lot of it. I think we’re doing a little better on time than I was fearing.

#### The Genealogies Give Precise Years

Okay, Genesis 5.

I just want to notice a few things. I’m not going to read the whole thing out loud. This is a very, very long passage.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, he made them in the likeness of God. Verse three says, “When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness according to his image and named him Seth.”

Just before we go on, I want you to notice a few things there. This genealogy is set up from “the father of.” I am the father of Seth. Then Seth, it says later on, lived 800 years in verse 7 and he became the father of Enosh. That’s the pattern: the father of, the father of, the father of.

The other thing to notice is that there are some real years here. It’s not rounded. It’s not like he lived maybe 50 years and then this other person lives about a thousand years. These are real numbers, right?

These are like 900—let’s see, yeah, 110 for Kenan in verse 14, 165 years, 162 years. My daughter Kylie is in physics and she learns about significant figures. If you guys remember this from science, if you have three significant figures, otherwise it would be 160, you don’t have two significant figures, right? All these three numbers are actually real. God wouldn’t say 162 years if He meant to round to 160. That’s not how rounding works.

“These are real numbers—God wouldn’t say 162 years if He meant to round to 160.”

These are real numbers.

If you go to Genesis 7:7, it tells you that the flood happened in Noah’s 600th year. Then in Genesis 11, it gives you the genealogy from Noah to Abram, Abraham.

Now, here’s the problem. When you say “the father of” in Hebrew, it means the direct father. There are actually no examples anywhere of it meaning anything but the direct father.

The confusion is that in the New Testament, there are some genealogies, for example in Luke, that have the word “begot” or “son of” or something like this. Those words can actually mean grandson or maybe even great-grandson in some cases. However, that’s not the case here with “father.”

Father actually always means direct father. It’s not like the New Testament genealogy. Some people will say, “Well, look at some of these other ones in the New Testament,” but it’s a different language.

Also, what you have to understand is that these are precise years. If these years are not precise, if they’re just allegorical, it’s kind of a lie to be honest. Why would you say 162 if it’s not 162? It’s like I went and I bought a car.

Someone asks, “How much is it?” and I say, “Well, I’m going to be paying the wrong amount of money, right?” That doesn’t make any sense.

#### No Room for Long Ages After Adam

Add them all up. You can do this in your head if you’d like on your own time. Mike’s an accountant here. He could do it for you. 2,000 years.

You get about 2,000 years. There’s not really any wiggle room here.

And just if you want some confirmation, Jude 1:14 has a really fascinating little statement that talks about Enoch. He says, “Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam.” If you count up in those genealogies, you see that Enoch indeed is seventh from Adam. So the literal interpretation of this verse—father, father, father—is confirmed by that verse.

There really is no room for long ages between Adam and Abraham. And by the way, Adam to Jesus is not controversial. It’s 2,000 years. In fact, everybody kind of believes that because, sorry, Abraham to Jesus.

And then from Jesus to us is also not controversial. That’s 2,000 years. If you add that all up, you get—good job, Mike—6,000 years. So we have 6,000 years between Adam and us.

“Add it all up and you get 6,000 years between Adam and us.”

But you may say, okay, but maybe there’s millions and billions of years before Adam.

Reason 4: Jesus and the Apostles Affirm Young Earth

And here we come to some of the testimony of Jesus and the apostles. Very fascinating stuff actually.

Is there a long period of time before Adam? Mark 10:5-7 says this: “But Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”

Now, back when Khalif was teaching about the trinity, he said something like, “Sometimes you look at a verse and it’s not like actually even a verse about the trinity, but it just assumes the trinity.” And that’s actually one of the ways we know the Trinity is true.

Well, what would have to be true if Jesus’s statement is absolutely true?

First of all, you have to come to terms with yourself and realize that Jesus cannot lie, right? And then you say, okay, look at this. If there was the evolutionary view, and that was true, it’s like 14 billion years since the big bang. You have the beginning here.

Okay, it’s not going to work. And you also have Adam and Eve and you have Christ. Is that really the beginning of creation?

Is that true? Why would he even say the beginning of creation? He didn’t have to say that.

Jesus could have said from the beginning of Adam, God made them male and female. No, he said the beginning of creation.

Mark 10:6: “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”

Weird, right? Why would he say that? So Jesus’s view, it seems like, is there was the beginning and then Adam and Eve was created on day six. That fits with what he’s saying here. But that’s not all.

#### Paul Confirms Man at the Beginning

The Apostle Paul says this in Romans 1:18. It says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made.

So they are without excuse. This is a huge problem for you if you believe in evolution. Because he says, why is it that man is held accountable for sin?

Why is man held accountable for sin? Because since the creation of the world, he has witnessed God’s power and goodness. He has witnessed his eternal power and divine nature. That is why he is without excuse.

Now if in the beginning of creation man was not there, what would he have witnessed? Why would he be held accountable?

“Since the creation of the world, man has witnessed God’s power. That is why he is without excuse.”

And again, Paul could have said for since the creation of man, but he said the creation of the world. Paul seems to be a young earth creationist.

The other thing that people might say about this verse is that maybe just the angels are there, right? Maybe it’s the angels who are witnessing. But if you just read this verse, it cannot be the case. Why would the angels witnessing God’s creation cause man to be held accountable? It does not make any sense.

If you want Romans 1 to actually make sense, you have to be a young earth creationist.

#### Hebrews Confirms the Foundation of the World

All right. Hebrews 9:25. Whoever wrote Hebrews is talking about Jesus offering himself. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice.

“Nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

This is something you have to wrap your mind around a little bit. They’re talking about how sacrifices have to be offered over and over again, right? That’s what happened in the Old Testament. Jesus had to offer only one sacrifice.

But if it wasn’t the case that Jesus only had to offer one sacrifice, then he’d have to suffer over and over again since the foundation of the world. But why did he say the foundation of the world? Unless man was created at the foundation of the world, the fall must have happened near the foundation of the world.

All of these verses, and there are a few more, seem to indicate that if we take these verses at face value, there is no way we can put a long period of time between creation and Adam.

“All of these verses indicate there is no way to put a long period of time between creation and Adam.”

Reason 5: The Global Flood

Okay, this is a topic in itself. There’s lots and lots and lots of books written about the global flood.

The point here is that if you believe as a Christian in the global flood, then you can’t actually believe in any of the theories of the origin of the earth, the flood, the fossil record, or anything like this in terms of billions of years. The global flood would have washed away and scrambled hopelessly all of the evidence for that.

So if you’re looking at, say, the Grand Canyon or whatever, and you’re like, “Yeah, these rock layers or whatever—these are billions of years”—literally a global flood would have washed all of the evidence away and you’re looking at something completely different. That’s the point of this.

First, let me convince you that the flood was actually global, because that might be a point of controversy as well. If you are an old earth creationist, they understand that problem, and so they insist that the flood was a local flood.

You just can’t believe in old earth creationism if you also believe in a global flood, because that would have just washed everything away.

“A global flood would have washed away and scrambled hopelessly all the evidence for billions of years.”

#### The Flood Must Be Global

It would have washed all the evidence away. Genesis 7:19 says, “The water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.” We could have gone many places, but I thought this verse was really good because it talks about how the water covered all the high mountains.

Now, when was the last time Mount Everest was flooded? Do you guys remember? It doesn’t happen. Why doesn’t it happen?

But when we were house shopping a few years ago, we were looking higher up in elevation. It’s because you don’t get flooded up there. Okay, if you were to cover any mountain with water, what would happen? It would have to mean that the whole earth is covered because water always seeks its own level, right? From just a physics standpoint, it would be impossible.

It would look like this: you would have water covering the mountain and then there’d be like a cliff. That would be the only way a local flood could work if you were covering the mountains. Otherwise, the water would just seek its level. It would never cover the mountain tops if there was just a local flood. Does that make sense?

“If water covered all the high mountains, it would have to mean the whole earth is covered.”

You can’t really believe this is talking about what it’s saying if you believe in a local flood.

But this is an even more severe problem, and this is in Genesis 9:11.

Ever since my brother was in preschool, he went to a preschool called Noah’s Ark. There were all of these rainbows everywhere, right? Today, they make different things. But back then, the rainbow actually meant a rainbow. And you could see all these animals, whatever.

#### God’s Covenant of the Rainbow

Why? Because Genesis 9:11 says, “I establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood. Neither shall there be again a flood to destroy the earth.” And the covenant that God makes with mankind for this to be the case was a rainbow.

That was a covenant. It’s a deal. Right?

Now, look at that. All flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood. But if this was just a local flood, you have to say that God is a liar. Because even in our lifetime, there has been catastrophic local flooding that has killed thousands of people.

So how could that be? How could he be talking about a local flood? You have to say if he’s talking about a local flood, then God broke the deal.

“If this was a local flood, God broke the deal—catastrophic local flooding has killed thousands in our lifetime.”

#### Peter Equates the Flood with Future Judgment

Here’s another problem. 2 Peter 3:5-7.

By the word of God, the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.

But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment. Now, you have to understand the equation that Peter is putting out here. He’s saying that there is a flood, right? Talking about Noah’s flood.

And just like that, the present heavens and the earth will be destroyed by fire. So he’s taking one and equating it with the other. Just like how the entire world was destroyed by the flood, the entire world will be destroyed by fire.

But if you believe that it was just a local flood, well, maybe that’s good news because maybe the fire itself is also local. So you have a local judgment and a local flood, right? Maybe that’s what it is. It’s like dealing with a small house fire. Just put a fire extinguisher and you can just be done with it.

No. This is not what he’s saying. He’s talking about Peter assuming that the flood is global.

“Just as the entire world was destroyed by the flood, the entire world will be destroyed by fire.”

#### A Catastrophic Reshaping of the Earth

Okay, if it’s a global flood, what’s your problem? Look at what it says in the scripture. A global flood happened for 40 days of actual rainfall and then 150 days of flooding where the water is just sloshing around the earth causing all sorts of havoc, scrambling your entire fossil record, moving the fossils all around everywhere.

It’s a catastrophic reshaping of the earth. Volcanoes, tectonics, things are moving around everywhere. Continents are moving around. Mountains are being formed.

And if you don’t account for that in your geological model, then what are you even modeling? So if you assume what we call uniformitarianism—that is, the world just like nothing really happens throughout history that’s global and catastrophic in scope—then you’re going to get wrong answers if you don’t believe in the global flood.

“If you don’t account for a catastrophic global flood in your geological model, what are you even modeling?”

Reason 6: Death and Suffering Before the Fall

Okay, last one.

Last reason I think you should believe in young earth creationism and this is a serious one. This is possibly enough just by itself. Okay, death and suffering.

“If you believe in billions of years, it requires death and suffering before the fall.”

If you believe in billions of years, it requires death and suffering before the fall. This is not controversial. I was talking to one person who was an old earth creationist and I raised this point and he said well, death came because of Adam and he said well but it doesn’t say anything about the death of animals. I don’t know, maybe he’s not talking about animals right. Let’s see what he says about this verse. I thought, sorry about this point. What about Numbers 27? Okay.

So this is a serious theological problem. Genesis 1:29-30. God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed. It shall be food for you and to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the sky. I have given every green plant for food.” And God saw all that he has made and it was very good.

This is what God gave for Adam to eat, okay? And all the animals.

And what do you notice is missing from the menu?

Steak. Okay? There’s no steak here. It’s vegan. Okay? It’s all just vegetarian.

#### No Death Before the Curse

Why is it all just vegetarian? Because there is no death before the fall. Not even animal death.

“There is no death before the fall—not even animal death.”

But if you’re an evolutionist, you have a problem. If you believe that the fossil record and all these things—billions of years—all happened before Adam, then you must have death before the fall. In fact, there are many scientific papers that have shown fossils have cancer. So this one from the year 2020, they found a dinosaur fossil that had cancer. You find arthritis in dinosaurs.

Let’s say if you believe dinosaurs happened millions or billions of years before Adam. Well, there’s arthritis before Adam. And they even found fossils of thorns. This one is from 23 to 35 million years ago.

So you have death, you have cancer, you have sepsis, arthritis, and you have thorns before the fall. Now, why is that a problem?

Well, none of this stuff is supposed to happen before Adam, right? Genesis 3:17. Then to Adam he said, “Cursed is the ground because of you. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you and you will eat the plants of the field.” These things are part of the curse and they should not have appeared before the curse.

And just as an additional confirmation, if you believe that all of this animal death and all of this animal cancer, all of this arthritis—if God looked at that in one of the many ages of creation, I suppose, and said this is all very good—you have no reason to believe that this will not also be in the new earth because it was very good, right?

I mean, if death and animal death and everything is all fine, which I’m sure you guys understand, as many of you have pets and things like this. A pet death can hit you just as hard as a person in your house dying, right?

#### The New Earth Restores the Original Creation

It’s death is all very good. Maybe it’s going to be in the new earth, but we see from many verses in scripture, for example, Isaiah 11: “the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the young goat.”

Why are they lying down together? Because otherwise, usually they would just eat each other, right? Because that’s dinner.

“And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.” It’s like there’s a lion here and then there’s like a really fat calf over here. It’s like my buddy, my pal.

“And a little boy will lead them.” Okay, the little boy is basically just representative. It’s not any particular little boy. It’s just that little boys can run around by the line and stuff and you don’t have to worry about them, right?

“And also the cow and the bear will graze.” Oh, look. The bear is now a vegetarian.

“And the lion will eat straw like the ox.”

Now, why is it being restored like this? It’s because that’s how it was before the fall, right? I mean, you can’t come to a different conclusion.

Revelation 21:3-5 is all what we’re looking forward to, right? God himself will be among them and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no longer any death. There will be no longer any mourning or crying or pain.

I would say that death he’s talking about is just death in general. It’s death not only of humans but also of animals because otherwise everybody here who has a pet knows that when that animal dies there is mourning and there is pain. That’s why I don’t have a pet.

“There will no longer be any death, mourning, crying, or pain—death is part of the curse and is not very good.”

So death was part of a curse and it is not very good.

But if you believe in long ages, you think that evolution has happened through death and suffering and hunting and the survival of the fittest for billions of years.

Summary of Six Reasons

Okay, so I think we’re about wrapping up. Just to give you these six reasons again one more time. The plain reading of Genesis is six literal 24-hour days.

The fourth commandment shows that God himself is a young earth creationist.

And in fact, he has kind of broken the deal, broken the covenant. If he if he’s if that is a lie, basically if if he didn’t mean in six days he created the heavens and the earth. The Genesis genealogies don’t leave any room for long ages after Adam. Just can’t fit that in there. And then Jesus and the apostles seem to assume that there is no room between creation and Adam. So there’s nowhere to put long ages.

There’s nowhere to put millions of years, billions of years. And the global flood is just incompatible with all of these evolutionary theories. You have to believe in a local flood for for you to believe anything that in in those in those theories. And lastly, but not least, because I know of people actually, I think I’ve told you already that because of this topic, because they’re like, “Well, death and suffering and cancer, like there’s cancer before the fall like, well, then what are we being saved from?” It’s an intractable theological problem for long ages.

“There is nowhere to put millions or billions of years—it is an intractable theological problem for long ages.”

What Is at Stake

So I just want to end with this: really, what is at stake? We looked a little bit before about Second Peter 3. It says this: “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come, following after their own lusts and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? Forever since the father fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’”

What were these people? These people were uniformitarians. They didn’t believe there was a god that created the earth. They just believed that everything kind of happened through natural processes.

They also believed that because that’s how it started, that’s how it will continue forever. Right? If you believe that’s how the earth was created, why would you believe anything would change?

And when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. Peter is saying these people who believe that the earth was just the same as it always has been are foolish because they forget about this flood.

They forgot that God destroyed the earth before and he will destroy the earth again. He says, “But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

And you have to understand that this whole idea of old earth creationism really came from the secular philosophy of needing an origin story that has no god in it. Okay? Because if you don’t believe in God, you have to have some story of how the earth was created, otherwise your worldview makes no sense.

So then you take that and you use that to justify living in sin. And that’s really the main reason that whole theory exists. And then this has been brought into the church sometimes by malicious people but also by innocent people and well-meaning people. But they don’t realize they’ve imported a Trojan horse.

And this Trojan horse is causing many people to think that the Bible is just a book of myths.

“You shouldn’t believe Scripture about heaven if it can’t even get the things of earth right—that is what is at stake.”

And you shouldn’t believe it when it talks about the things of heaven because it can’t even get the things of earth right.

So who do we trust? Do we trust God when he says how the earth began, or do we trust man and the evolutionary theories?

Closing Prayer

I next week when you come back, I will be answering some questions. I’m sorry I didn’t leave a lot of room for questions this time, but I really wanted to get through all this.

If you have a question, please send it to me via email, hopefully by Thursday. You can send it to me later, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to answer it. I’ll be able to think about your question, and I know a lot of you have some questions. Please send them.

As an added bonus, I’ll have a bunch of booklets that Dwayne gave me—these sort of 20, I don’t know, these booklets that answer a whole bunch of common questions about creationism. I’ll be giving those out next week, and if you give me a question, then you’ll have first dibs on that.

All right, it’s 10 o’clock. Let’s end it with a word of prayer.

Father, we thank you that the scripture is so clear. Often we hear that the Bible is not a science textbook and so we shouldn’t read it as such. But in fact, we know that your word is more trustworthy than any science textbook. Science textbooks in fact are made obsolete every 10 years.

But your scriptures are never obsolete, and you can never lie. You can never make a false covenant. You will never help. You will never give us something to believe that is not true.

Lord, you have clearly set out in your word that you created the earth in six literal 24-hour days. I pray, Lord, that you would help us to think on these topics and understand them, and help us to use them even in evangelism. Because we know that it is a stronghold erected, a fortress erected against the knowledge of God, we pray that you would tear these down in Christ’s name we pray.

Amen. Amen.

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