When

In the beginning, God created...

Genesis 1:1, NKJV

 

There is a lot of conflict between various disciplines of study regarding the beginning of all that is.  There is conflict between people, even conflict within, over when God did anything.  It's understandable considering, for instance, that the sciences extrapolate that the universe is billions of years old and the Bible indicates the first man Adam started counting the years of his life only six thousand years ago.  The question then is asked, when did God create everything?  If Genesis says He did it all in six days, and we take the Bible literally, then wasn't the sixth day only six millennia ago?  If light has only been shining since 4000 BC, how did it reach us from stars and galaxies that are billions of light years away?  Is the earth billions of years old, or is it only 5 days older than mankind?  Is science right, or the Bible?  Questions that lead to controversy that lead to conflict, and I don't think any of it is necessary.

 

I've studied the genealogies carefully for nearly forty years, because I am fascinated by lines of ancestry and descent.  I've calculated and figured and added and subtracted, and like all those others who have gone before me with their mathematical formulas, I can only conclude that Adam really did live only 6000 years ago, and died a mere 5000 years ago.  I accept that as truth, because I believe the Bible is accurate and should be taken literally.  But does the Bible say that the Earth is only 6000 years old?  Think carefully, because that answer isn't nearly as clear cut.

 

When was the beginning?  The Bible doesn't tell us; it simply states that there was one.  In the beginning, way back at the very beginning of all things, when God started start, God created the heavens and the earth.  Time started ticking, and the universe started spinning, and they've been doing so ever since.  But the Bible doesn't then go on to say that immediately God took the next six days and made everything else.  In fact, it gives us a bit of a mystery.

 

In the Bible, when God makes something, it is always good and perfect and without need for improvement.  But Genesis Chapter One Verse Two reveals the picture of Earth as a fixer-upper, a planet that is without form, void, dark, completely in chaos.  That doesn't sound like something God did.  Many before me have pointed out that there is another verse in Scripture that speaks about the Earth in the same way.  Jeremiah 4:23 says, "I beheld the earth, and indeed it was without form, and void; and the heavens, they had no light."  And the men were gone, and the birds had fled, and everything was wasted, and all the cities were broken down in the presence of God...

 

Without going into an entire theological, exegetical breakdown, let me sum up by saying the Bible never repeats itself without reason.  Jeremiah was having a vision tying the judgment of God back to the very beginning of the world, a world that was formless and void and dark because God had overthrown it in judgment.

 

You see, the Bible is the revelation of God's dealings with humanity, a humanity that He created 6000 years ago on an earth that is older than that.  How much older?  He doesn't tell us.  There is an eternity past and an eternity future that God does not reveal to us in His word, so I don't concern myself so much with when God did it.  I just know that He did.