When Did God Create the Heavens and the Earth?

By Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

Our examination of frequently encountered objections to faith in Christ and His word focuses this time on an unnecessarily controversial issue - the age of the universe and/or the earth. The argument is often stated in this way: There is overwhelming evidence that the universe is much older than the 6000 years indicated by the Bible.

First, we want to express our view that it is pointless, even damaging, to make an issue out of something that is neither critical to the case against atheistic evolutionism nor critical to one's faith in Christ and confidence in the inerrancy of the Bible. Though the Bible is very specific about who created the universe and somewhat specific about how and why he created, it is less specific about when. Certainly, the who question is crucial to one's salvation, and the bow and why questions, important. But the when question hardly matters.

As for its bearing on the evolution issue, whether the universe is billions of years old or only thousands of years old makes no difference in the case for or against life's evolving exclusively by random natural processes. According to our current understanding of the complexities of organic matter, at least 10 to the power of 100,000,000,000 years would be needed for even one virus to evolve from inorganic molecules. So the difference between 10 to the 10th power years and 10 to the 4^th power years pales by comparison.

More importantly, a literal reading of the Bible does not imply that God created the universe and the earth only a few thousand years ago in six consecutive 24-hour days. To support my exegesis I could cite the work of many evangelical Bible scholars, but I think it sufficient to note that the International Council for Biblical Inerrancy deliberated for many hours on this issue and concluded (as we published in our inaugural issue of Facts &Faith, spring/summer 1987) that no case can be made from the original languages to favor a young universe/earth interpretation.

So, what does the Bible say about when the universe was created? In Habakkuk 3:6 the mountains are declared to be "ancient" and the hills "age-old." In Proverbs 8:22-31 God compares His eternality to the length of time the oceans and mountains have been in place and to the span of time since He created the heavens. The figures of speech used in Psalm 90:2-6, Ecclesiastes 1: 3-11, and Micah 6:2 all depict the immeasurable antiquity of God's presence upon (and plans for) the earth. If you understand even a little about physics, you will see that the claim made in Genesis 22:17, Jeremiah 33:22, and Hebrews 11: 12, namely that the stars are more numerous than the largest numbers used by the Hebrews and Greeks, implies a minimum age for the universe significantly in excess of that proposed in the 16th century by Archbishop Ussher.

Why, then, does Moses use the Hebrew word yowm, translated "day," for the six periods of creation? In English we would use words like "era," "age," or "epoch" to describe long periods of time. But, in Hebrew there are no such words. The word olam is often suggested, but it is defined as "forever," "perpetual," "lasting," "always," "of olden times," or "the remote past, future, or both." its range of usage does not include a set period of time. Thus, yowm would be the most appropriate Hebrew word to refer to a specific, though lengthy, period of time. Even in English we sometimes use the word day for an epoch, as in "the day of the Romans" or "the day of the dinosaurs."