Thinking About Forever

If the scientific evidences that confirm a young earth are so compelling, why aren’t more people convinced? Simply put, more is at stake than just science. We are asking people to change how they view their place in time and eternity. And that’s not easy. In fact, without God’s grace, it’s impossible.

Our goal isn’t to win arguments but to point souls to faith in Jesus Christ, and that requires patience.

God’s Word Is Essential to the Argument

Whenever this topic comes up, I remind myself about my own struggles back in college. Like so many others, I grew up hearing that the earth was billions of years old and the universe was much older. I took this as factual history. It was the only perspective I knew, and I accepted it on faith. This view made my life seem bleak and hopeless, but it was what it was. Or so I thought.

Then, as a college freshman, I met someone who believed the Bible was factually true, including its claims about earth history. That was the first time I was exposed to such a radically different perspective on time and eternity.

Sure, I brought up fossils and other common objections to a young earth, but this creationist had reasonable answers to every objection. More significantly, he offered an alternative, specific history that began with six days of Creation, Adam’s Fall, and the worldwide Flood. The Bible was the key that God used to open my eyes.

Different Past, Different Future

Being exposed to the Bible’s history is both humbling and convicting. It forces us to see that science is limited when it comes to explaining the past. The universe has not necessarily always operated the same way as it does today. We learn from the Bible that the world was created as a place for mankind to live in peace with God forever, without experiencing sin or death. Modern scientists can’t fathom how a world like that would operate.

Then we learn that this once-perfect world was cursed because of Adam’s sin, condemned to a process of decay (“the bondage of corruption,” Romans 8:19–22). That’s what scientists observe today, and the evidence for this decay is the focus of this issue. Given what we know about magnetic decay, etc., there’s no way life could endure for long upon this cursed earth.

Since the beginning of time, God has been working out His plan of salvation.

But the Bible’s message doesn’t end there. God has promised to make “a new heaven and a new earth,” where He will dwell with His people in peace and joy for eternity (Revelation 21:1–2). God freely offers this salvation to anyone who repents of his rebellion against Him and turns to Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross for our sins but rose again from the dead. This is the good news of the gospel.

That’s ultimately why we argue for a young earth. Since the beginning of time, God has been working out His plan of salvation, first promised to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15. God promised to bless all nations through Adam’s descendant, Jesus Christ (Genesis 22:18). That history is the basis of the gospel; it is so bound up with our understanding of earth history that we can’t separate the two.

As a college freshman, I had a spiritual problem that science alone couldn’t solve. My heart was blind and darkened, unwilling to acknowledge my Maker. The solution was to hear the gospel, rooted in the history of Genesis. God’s Word places humans at the very “beginning” of earth’s timetable (Matthew 19:4). What a different view of time!