Why Recent Creation Matters
Why Recent Creation Matters
by Henry Morris, Ph.D. *
No aspect of creationism is under greater attack by evolutionists than the biblical doctrine of recent creation. The evolutionist, knowing the weakness of the scientific case for evolution, almost always directs his own argument not against creation per se, but against recent creation and its corollary, Flood geology.
As a result, many people who consider themselves creationists have been intimidated against this biblical concept. Instead, they try to cling to the 19th-century evolutionary compromise now known as the "day-age theory" and "progressive creation." Some take refuge in the "gap theory," hoping they can ignore the problem by pigeonholing the evolutionary ages of the geologists in an imaginary gap between the first two verses of Genesis. Both theories attempt to accommodate the geological ages, even though it is the geological ages that provide the main basis and framework for evolution. We "young earth creationists" are an embarrassment to both the progressive creationists and the gap creationists, and so they urge us to acknowledge that recent creation is merely an optional interpretation that is unimportant and expendable.
But we cannot do this. As a strictly scientific question, divorced from any biblical or theological considerations (such as in a public school textbook or in a scientific debate), the date of creation can and should be treated as a separate topic from the fact of creation. This does not make it expendable, however. It is an important and basic issue that deserves serious study in its own right, strictly in terms of the relevant scientific data. When the biblical and theological data are also considered (in a church or another Christian context), the doctrine of recent creation becomes critically significant, integrally interwoven with the doctrine of creation itself. Outlined below, very briefly, are a few of the reasons why the doctrine of recent creation is vitally important to true biblical Christianity.
Historical Reasons
"Progressive creationism" is not a modern interpretation developed to bring the Genesis record into harmony with modern science, but it is a very ancient concept devised to impose a theistic connotation upon the almost universal pagan evolutionary philosophies of antiquity. The primeval existence of the cosmos, with matter in some form present from eternity, was a dogma common to all ancient religions and philosophies, seeking to function without an omnipotent, holy, eternal, personal Creator God. Compromising monotheists, both in ancient Israel and in the early Christian church, repeatedly resorted to various allegorical interpretations of Scripture, involving some form of protracted creation, seeking to amalgamate creationist/redemptionist theology with pagan humanistic philosophy. Almost inevitably, however, such compromises ended in complete apostasy on the part of the compromisers.
In more modern times, Charles Darwin himself is a classic case in point. Starting out as a biblical creationist, his decline began with the acceptance of Lyellianuniformitarianism, the geological ages, and progressive creationism. He soon became a full-fledged theistic evolutionist and eventually an atheist. The same steps were traveled by many other scientists of that period. In fact, science itself was originally (in the days of Newton and the other founders of modern science) committed to the strict biblical chronology, then drifted into progressive creationism (after Cuvier, Lyell, and others), then into a Darwinian theistic evolutionism, and finally into total evolutionary naturalism.
The creationist revival of the first quarter of the 20th century was short-lived because it again tried to compromise with the day-age theory. This was Bryan's fatal mistake at the Scopes trial. The various early creationist organizations also failed to take a firm position on recent creationism and soon either died out (e.g., The Religion and Science Association, which lasted just two years, and the Creation-Deluge Society, which survived for six years), or became almost impotent (as in the case of the Evolution Protest Movement) or capitulated to theistic evolutionism (for example, the American Scientific Affiliation). Multitudes of churches, schools, and other Christian organizations have followed the same dead-end path of compromise during the past century.
Theological Reasons
Even if one does not accept the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, the concept of a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, loving God is fatally flawed by the old earth dogma. The very reason for postulating an ancient cosmos is to escape from God-to push Him as far away in space and as far back in time as possible, hoping thereby eventually to escape His control altogether, letting nature become "god."
Surely an omniscient God could devise a better process of creation than the random, wasteful, and inefficient trial and error charade of the so-called geological ages, and certainly a loving, merciful God would never be guilty of a creative process that would involve the suffering and death of multitudes of innocent animals in the process of arriving at man millions of years later.
It should be obvious that the God of the Bible would create everything complete and good, right from the start. The wastefulness and randomness and cruelty which is now so evident in the world (both in the groaning creation of the present and in the fossilized world of the past) must represent an intrusion into His creation-not a mechanism for its accomplishment. God would never do a thing like that, except in judgment of sin!
Furthermore, if one must make a choice between a full-fledged theistic evolutionism and a compromising progressive creationism, with its day-age theory of Genesis, one would have to judge the latter worse than the former, theologically speaking. Both systems are equally objectionable in terms of their common commitment to the geological age system, with its supposed three-billion-year spectacle of random wastefulness and a suffering, dying world. However, progressive creationism compounds the offense by stipulating that God must redirect and recharge everything at intervals.
Theistic evolution at least postulates a God able to plan and energize the total creation process right at the start. Progressive creation postulates a world that has to be pumped up with new spurts of creative energy and guidance whenever the previous injection runs down or misdirects. Surely all those who really believe in the God of the Bible should see that any compromise with the geological-age system is theological chaos. Whether the compromise involves the day-age theory or the gap theory, (See explanation below) the very concept of the geological ages implies divine confusion and cruelty, and the God of the Bible could not have been involved in such a thing as that at all.
Biblical Reasons
As far as the biblical record itself is concerned, there is not the slightest indication anywhere in Scripture that the earth endured long ages before the creation of Adam and Eve. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said: "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female" Mark 10:6But 'God made them male and female'[a] from the beginning of creation..Gen 1:27; 5:2
The crystal-clear statement of the Lord in the Ten Commandments completely precludes the day-age interpretation of the six days of creation:Exodus 20:8-11"Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
If God's six work days were not the same kind of days as the six days of man's work week, then God is not able to say what He means. The language could hardly be more clear and explicit. Note also its further confirmation later in the book:Exodus 31:17-18It is a permanent sign of my covenant with the people of Israel. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day he stopped working and was refreshed.'" When the Lord finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, written by the finger of God.
All Scripture is divinely inspired, but this portion was divinely inscribed!
Still further, the record of the six days of creation concludes with the statement by God that everything in His creation was "very good" at the end of the six daysGenesis 1:31Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.There is no way this could be harmonized with a worldwide fossil graveyard a mile deep all around the earth. The Bible makes it plain, in fact, that death never even entered the world until Adam sinnedRomans 5:12When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.1 Corinthians 15:21So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. and brought God's curse on the ground Genesis 3:17And to the man he said, "Since you listened to your wife and ate from the treewhose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you.All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.Romans 8:20-22Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope,the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay.For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.Scientific Reasons
Those who insist on accommodating the geological ages, despite all the biblical, theological, and historical arguments against them, do so on the grounds that science requires it. "God would not deceive us," they say, "by making the earth look so old, if it were really young."
But it is really the other way around. If the earth were really old, God would not deceive us by saying so clearly and emphatically that He created it all in six days.
For that matter, the earth does not really look old anyway. Evolutionists have tried to make it look old by imposing the unscriptural and unscientific dogma of uniformitarianismon the geologic record of earth history as preserved in the rocks of the earth's crust. The fact is that geologists are today finally abandoning their outmoded 19th-century uniformitarianism, realizing that catastrophism provides the only realistic explanation for the great geological structures of the earth.(See below uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism)Even though they are still unwilling to acknowledge the validity of flood geology as based on the Bible, they do recognize now that the earth's various geological features were each formed rapidly, in intense catastrophes of one kind or another. Furthermore, there are many times more geological processes and systems that yield a young age for the earth than the handful of radiometric methods that can be forced (through an extreme application of uniformitarianism) to yield an old age. The continued insistence on an ancient earth is purely because of the philosophic necessity to justify evolution and the pantheistic religion of eternal matter.
If it were not for the continued apathetic and compromising attitude of Christian theologians and other intellectuals on this vital doctrine of recent creation, evolutionary humanism would long since have been exposed and defeated. The world will never take the biblical doctrine of the divine control and imminent consummation of all things very seriously until we ourselves take the biblical doctrine of the recent creation of all things seriously. Neither in space nor in time is our great God of creation and consummation "far from every one of us"Acts 17:27"His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him-though he is not far from any one of us.(Acts 17:27).
Adapted from Dr. Morris' article "Recent Creation Is a Vital Doctrine" in the June 1984 edition of Acts & Facts.
“What is the Day-Age Theory?”Although Moses wrote the book of Genesis approximately thirty-four hundred years ago, it has been in just the last couple of centuries that serious debate over the nature and date of creation has developed. Consequently, there are now a number of theories relative to the creation account and one of them is called the Day-Age theory. Basically, this is a belief that the "days" spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis are sequential periods and not literal 24-hour days. Each day, therefore is thought to represent a much longer, albeit undefined, period of time, such as a million or more years. Essentially, it is an attempt to harmonize Scripture with theistic evolution.Science has never disproved one word of the Bible. Nevertheless, in the last century and a half the scientific community has done a remarkable job of indoctrinating us with their worldview, one that is very much opposed to the truth of Scripture. However, the truth is that the Bible is the supreme truth and it should be the standard by which scientific theory should be evaluated, not vice-versa. At the very core of most of these contrived theories is an attempt to remove God from the equation. And one of the unfortunate consequences of questioning the historicity of Genesis is that the floodgates burst open for man to question every part of God's Word that does not agree with our limited intellectual abilities. However, everything Scripture teaches about sin and death requires a literal interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis. That being said, let's review some of the arguments made by the proponents of the Day-Age theory.Adherents of this theory often point out that the word used for "day" in Hebrew, yom, sometimes refers to a period of time that is more than a literal twenty-four hour day. One scriptural passage in particular often looked upon in support of this theory is 2 Peter 3:8 where it says "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." However, as with all biblical interpretation, one must look at the context of the entire passage. In 2 Peter 3:3-10 we see that Peter is talking about scoffers in the last days as they question the second coming of Christ. This passage simply reminds us that God stands outside of time and we should not doubt the occurrence of a future biblical event simply because it seems to be taking a long time from our limited human perspective. Accordingly, 2 Peter 3:8 has nothing to do with the length of the creation week, nor was it meant to turn "day" into a mathematical formula.Each day in the first chapter of Genesis is described as having an evening and a morning. Indeed, these two words-evening and morning-are used extensively in the Old Testament and each time they refer to normal days. Moreover, outside Genesis yom is used with a number hundreds of times-i.e., "one day" and each time it means an ordinary day. If Moses wanted to convey a longer period of time he could have used either olam or qedem, in place of yom.Another reason given for a metaphorical "day" as postulated by this theory is that with the sun not being made until day four, how could there have been ordinary days (i.e. day and night) before this? However, the sun is not needed for a day and night. What is needed is light and a rotating Earth. The "evening and morning" indicates a rotating Earth, and as far as light is concerned, recall that God's very first command was "Let there be light" and there was light (Genesis 1:3). Separating the light from the darkness was the very first thing our Creator did. Also, remember that in Revelation 21:23 we see that the New Jerusalem "does not need the sun or moon to shine on it" as the "glory of God" will provide the "light." At the beginning of creation, God's radiant light would have certainly been sufficient until the luminaries were created three days later.Additionally, if the "days" of Genesis are really long periods of time such as millions or billions of years, then God's Word is completely undermined at its very foundation as we would then have disease, suffering and death before the fall of man, even though Scripture clearly indicates that "sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin" (Romans 5:12). Thus, it is clear that there was no death prior to Adam's act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden. If this theory were true, it would nullify the doctrine of the fall of mankind into sin. Furthermore, it would also render void the doctrine of the Atonement, for if there was no "fall" why would we need a Redeemer?Martin Luther once said: "But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are├ö├ç┬¬since God is speaking, it is not fitting for you wantonly to turn His Word in the direction you wish it to go." Instead of looking to science to tell us what God really meant, all we really need to do is study Scripture, daily and eagerly, just like the Bereans (Acts 17:11), as all of it was inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16), and all of it is true (Psalm 119:160).Christ Himself spoke of the importance of believing in Moses' writings (John 5:45-47). And in Exodus 20:11, this is what Moses had to say: "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day."
“Does Genesis chapter 1 mean literal 24-hour days?”Answer: A careful examination of the Hebrew word for "day" and the context in which it appears in Genesis will lead to the conclusion that "day" means a literal, 24-hour period of time. The Hebrew word yom translated into the English "day" can mean more than one thing. It can refer to the 24-hour period of time that it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis (e.g., "there are 24 hours in a day"). It can refer to the period of daylight between dawn and dusk (e.g., "it gets pretty hot during the day but it cools down a bit at night"). And it can refer to an unspecified period of time (e.g., "back in my grandfather’s day…"). It is used to refer to a 24-hour period in Genesis 7:11. It is used to refer to the period of daylight between dawn and dusk in Genesis 1:16. And it is used to refer to an unspecified period of time in Genesis 2:4. So, what does it mean in Genesis 1:5-2:2 when it’s used in conjunction with ordinal numbers (i.e., the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day, the sixth day, and the seventh day)? Are these 24-hour periods or something else? Could yom as it is used here mean an unspecified period of time?We can determine how yom should be interpreted in Genesis 1:5-2:2 simply by examining the context in which we find the word and then comparing its context with how we see its usage elsewhere in Scripture. By doing this we let Scripture interpret itself. The Hebrew word yom is used 2301 times in the Old Testament. Outside of Genesis 1, yom plus a number (used 410 times) always indicates an ordinary day, i.e., a 24-hour period. The words "evening" and "morning" together (38 times) always indicate an ordinary day. Yom + "evening" or "morning" (23 times) always indicates an ordinary day. Yom + "night" (52 times) always indicates an ordinary day.The context in which the word yom is used in Genesis 1:5-2:2, describing each day as "the evening and the morning," makes it quite clear that the author of Genesis meant 24-hour periods. The references to "evening" and "morning" make no sense unless they refer to a literal 24-hour day. This was the standard interpretation of the days of Genesis 1:5-2:2 until the 1800s when a paradigm shift occurred within the scientific community, and the earth’s sedimentary strata layers were reinterpreted. Whereas previously the rock layers were interpreted as evidence of Noah’s flood, the flood was thrown out by the scientific community and the rock layers were reinterpreted as evidence for an excessively old earth. Some well-meaning but terribly mistaken Christians then sought to reconcile this new anti-flood, anti-biblical interpretation with the Genesis account by reinterpreting yom to mean vast, unspecified periods of time.The truth is that many of the old-earth interpretations are known to rely upon faulty assumptions. But we must not let the stubborn close-mindedness of some scientists influence how we read the Bible. According to Exodus 20:9-11, God used six literal days to create the world in order to serve as a model for man’s workweek: work six days, rest one. Certainly God could have created everything in an instant if He wanted to. But apparently He had us in mind even before He made us (on the sixth day) and wanted to provide an example for us to follow.Recommended Resource: The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton.
“What is the Gap Theory? Did anything happen between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2?”Genesis 1:1-2 states, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." The Gap Theory is the view that God created a fully functional earth with all animals, including the dinosaurs and other creatures we know only from the fossil record. Then, the theory goes, something happened to destroy the earth completely-some speculate it was the fall of Satan to earth-so that the earth became without form and void. At this point, God started all over again, recreating the earth in its paradise form as further described in Genesis.There are too many problems with this theory to describe adequately in a brief response, not the least of which is that if something important had occurred between the two verses, God would have told us so. God would not have left us to speculate in ignorance about such important events. Second, Genesis 1:31 says God declared His creation to be "very good," which He certainly could not say if evil had already entered the world via Satan's fall in the "gap." Along the same line, if the fossil record is to be explained by the millions of years in the gap, that means death, disease, and suffering were common many ages before Adam fell. But the Bible tells us that it was Adam's sin that introduced death, disease, and suffering to all life: "Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin" (Romans 5:12).Those who hold to the Gap Theory do so in order to reconcile the theories of modern scientists who hold to the old-earth theory-the belief that the earth is billions of years older than can be accounted for by adding up the genealogies of man found in the Bible. Even well-meaning evangelicals have bought into the old-earth theory, handling much of Genesis 1 allegorically, while attempting to hold to a literal interpretation of the rest of Scripture. The danger in this is in determining at what point to stop allegorizing and begin interpreting literally. Was Adam a literal person? How do we know? If he was not, then did he really bring sin into the human race, or can we allegorize that as well? And if there was no literal Adam to introduce the sin which we all inherit, then there was no reason for Jesus to die on the cross. A non-literal original sin denies the reason for Christ's coming in the first place, as explained in 1 Corinthians 15:22: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." At that point, Christianity itself becomes a hoax and the Bible just a nice book of stories and fables. Can we not see where this type of "reasoning" gets us?Genesis 1 simply cannot be reconciled with the notion that creation occurred over long periods of time, nor that these periods occurred in the space between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. What took place between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2? Absolutely nothing! Genesis 1:1 tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:2 informs us that when He first created the earth, it was formless, empty, and dark; it was not finished and not yet inhabited by creatures. The rest of Genesis chapter 1 tells us how God completed the formless, empty, and dark earth by filling it with life, beauty, and goodness. The Bible is true, literal, and perfect (Psalm 19:7-9). Science has never disproved anything in the Bible and it never will. The Bible is supreme truth and therefore is the standard by which scientific theory should be evaluated, not the other way around.“What does the Bible say about uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism?”Geologically speaking, uniformitarianism is the idea that geological processes (rates of erosion and uplift, etc.) are essentially the same today as they were in the unobservable past. We can, therefore, make accurate determinations about the past simply by observing the present. This principle is often summed up aphoristically in the phrase "the present is the key to the past." A strict uniformitarian would look at a canyon with a river running through the bottom and see millions of years of slow, gradual erosion caused by that river.Catastrophism is the idea that natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, etc.) can dramatically alter the surface of the Earth very quickly and that we can be certain that at least some of the geological features we see today were formed rapidly during past catastrophes rather than by the slow, gradual processes of uniformitarianism. We must, therefore, take the possible effects of unknown catastrophes into consideration when studying the history of the Earth's surface. A catastrophist would look at the same canyon with the river running through the bottom and wonder if it was the result of gradual uniformitarian or rapid catastrophic erosion (like the canyon rapidly formed by the Toutle River washing out a mudslide following the Mt. St. Helens eruption in Washington State). The uniformitarianism-versus-catastrophism debate is essentially this: how much can geologists rely on extrapolations of present-day geological processes when postulating the history and age of geological phenomena? While you won't find the words "uniformitarianism" or "catastrophism" anywhere in the Bible, it is abundantly clear which side it takes in the debate. According to the Bible, the Earth was inundated in a global deluge not many thousands of years ago (Noah's flood). Thus, any geological phenomena caused by gradual uniformitarian processes prior to that catastrophe were either eroded by the flood's waters or else lost under the massive amounts of sedimentation deposited during the flood. We cannot, therefore, rely upon uniformitarian reasoning to take us any further back in time than to the flood of Noah's day. The only canyons we see now are those that were carved out either during the flood or after its waters receded.Recommended Resource: The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb.