Long-Age Geology Requires Inconsistent Theology

Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with professing believers (especially those with higher education and university degrees) who will state something to the effect of yes, they believe in Jesus and trust the Bible, but Genesis shouldn’t be thought of “as a science textbook” or accurate as plainly written.

Often I would hear references to how belief in a six-day creation, a literal Adam and Eve, or a talking snake was just too whimsical, unbelievable, and obviously not to be taken as a historical account but in a more metaphorical sense.

Inconsistency in Interpretation

Of course, when asked whether they believe science supports the historical account that Balaam’s donkey spoke in Numbers 22, whether or not science confirms if ax-heads can float (2 Kings 6), virgins can give birth, men can walk on water (that isn’t frozen), crippled hands can get instantaneously healed, or whether science supports dead people coming back to life in three days, their inconsistency in regard to biblical interpretation (in light of scientific beliefs) began to show through.

When the idea of long ages and evolution began challenging the Genesis account of creation, the church signaled its nervousness about science and Scripture issues. Many Christians came to the point of abandoning Genesis as real history. Ever since, Bible skeptics have taken advantage of this inconsistency.

One such skeptic (discussed in previous articles) who pressed this inconsistency was the atheist Thomas Huxley, known as “Darwin’s bulldog.” Note Huxley’s understanding of the importance of the Bible’s historicity in relation to its authority, an issue we’ve noted was crucial to establishing Western culture.

The special distinction of Christianity, among the religions of the world, lies in its claim to be historical; to be surely founded upon events which have happened, exactly as they are declared to have happened in its sacred books . . . the New Testament presupposes the historical exactness of the Old Testament; that the points of contact of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ history are innumerable; and that the demonstrations of the falsity of the Hebrew records, especially in regard to those narratives which are assumed to be true in the New Testament, would be fatal to Christian theology.1

History or Mystery?

You see, Huxley knew his Bible, better than many Christians today. Many Christians seem to want to relegate the origins debate of Genesis 1–11 as some kind of allegorical story that we can isolate and set aside. Setting aside Genesis 1–11 allows them to carry on with Abraham, Moses, and primarily, Jesus’ and the apostles’ teachings in the New Testament.

However, as Huxley points out, the problem for these Christians is that the New Testament writers and Jesus, God in the flesh and the creator of everything, reference the Genesis account prolifically as real history throughout their teachings as integral to the lessons being taught. For example, Jesus describes Noah’s flood as a real event in Luke 17 analogous to a coming judgment.

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Luke 17:26–27

This isn’t the only time Noah’s flood is referenced in the NT as a historical event either. We can see other references in the book of Hebrews and in 1 and 2 Peter respectively.

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. Hebrews 11:7–9

God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 1 Peter 3:19–21

The earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 2 Peter 3:5–6

In contrast to Jesus and the apostles’ writings (which orthodox Christians accept as fully inspired by God) reinforcing the historicity of the flood account in Genesis, skeptics like Huxley mocked the reality of Noah’s flood as we can see from another one of his quotations: “In the face of the plainest and most commonplace of ascertained physical facts, the story of the Noachian Deluge has no more claim to credit than has that of Deucalion . . . it is utterly devoid of historical truth.”2

If you are unfamiliar, Deucalion is the son of Prometheus and is closely connected with a flood myth in Greek mythology. So here, Huxley was slandering the flood account as being on par with a fanciful fairy tale because of the supposed “facts” that proved it never happened.

But do you remember the basis for the so-called facts he’s referring to? Well, that would be the “snake oil” of uniformitarian geology championed by Charles Lyell we discussed in our last two articles.

Modern-day geologists mock uniformitarianism based on arguments demonstrating the rapid deposition of rock. Unlike the “slow and steady” processes Huxley championed, the rapid deposition occurred via catastrophic flood-like conditions and is apparent in the physical facts.

However, as the Christian contingent continues to compromise the historicity of Genesis 1–11, they should understand that it is not simply Noah’s flood that the New Testament writers speak of as real history but the entire narrative of the Genesis creation account.

Genesis Is Written as Real History

To demonstrate, here is a list of verses in the New Testament that corroborate the historicity of their corresponding teaching in Genesis as real events, compiled by Lita Sanders (author and MA in NT).3

• God created ex nihilo, not through an evolutionary process (Hebrews 11:3)
• God created in six days (Hebrews 4:4, 9–10)
• God created the first man from the dust (1 Corinthians 15:45–47)
• God created every nation from one man (Acts 17:26)
• God created woman from man (1 Corinthians 11:8)
• God created Adam first then Eve (1 Timothy 2:13)
• Eve was deceived by a serpent (1 Corinthians 11:3)
• God made people male and female from the beginning of the creation (Mark 10:6–7)
• People die because of Adam’s sin, and because of Adam, sin and death entered into the world (Romans 5:12)
• The entire creation was cursed by God (Romans 8:20–22)
• Jesus paid the price for Adam’s sin (Romans 5:18–19)
• Cain and Abel are real people in history (Hebrews 11:4; 1 John 3:12)
• The martyrs from Abel to Zechariah are real historical figures (Mathew 23:34–35)
• Noah existed and was saved from a flood that killed everyone (Luke 17:26–27)
• The world (kosmos) was destroyed by water (2 Peter 3:5–6)
• Noah constructed an ark to save his family (2 Peter 3:5–6)
• Eight people were saved from the flood (1 Peter 3:20)

Inconsistency Isn’t Impressive

So, you see, you aren’t building any type of intellectual credibility among your unsaved family and friends by saying that you believe in the story of evolution to explain origins because science (supposedly) supports such a view when it obviously contradicts the plain reading of the Bible both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The contradiction is further apparent if you confess to believing in supernatural accounts such as dead people coming back to life or virgins conceiving and giving birth, all the while the same scientific community demands that you believe in evolutionary long ages, denying those other plainly written accounts.

In fact, Christians should understand that many hardcore, atheistic types often think anyone who believes in miracles is already a little loony. So acquiescing to a naturalistic view of origins isn’t buying you any intellectual credibility points with them whatsoever.

They can see you are being inconsistent in how you pick and choose which parts of the Bible you are taking plainly, without a solid exegetical reason for doing so. One atheistic commentator stated when reviewing a book written by two professing Christians who believe God used evolution to create,

Why reject the story of creation and Noah’s Ark because we know that animals evolved, but nevertheless accept the reality of the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, which are equally at odds with science? After all, biological research suggests the impossibility of human females reproducing asexually, or of anyone reawakening three days after death.4

Attacking God’s Character

In fact, even worse than simple inconsistency, attempting to add millions of years of earth history (let alone the story of evolution) to the Bible also undermines the very character and goodness of God and has a direct and negative effect on the gospel message. Why? Because the Bible declares that God created the heavens and earth and everything in them in six literal 24-hour days, not only in Genesis 1 but in Exodus 20:11 as well.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

The Bible also identifies Jesus (the second person of the Trinity) as our Creator in Colossians 1:13–16, where it explicitly states Jesus created everything.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

The Goodness of God

At the end of the six days of creation, he called everything he’d created “very good.” Now, everyone should know what “very good” means, but for believers, it should be even more apparent because we can look to Jesus as our example. In the book of Acts, it describes the fact that during his earthly ministry Jesus went around doing “good” things.

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38

Now, what are some of the good things Jesus did? Well, he healed the blind. He healed lepers. He healed a man’s crippled legs and another’s crippled hand. He even brought dead people back to life. So, obviously, all these good deeds were fixing bad things because death, suffering, and disease are not “good,” and that’s why Jesus fixed them.

If Jesus announced everything he’d created as being very good at the end of the creation, then there was obviously no death, disease, or suffering that occurred within it before then. “Bad things” would not have occurred in the creation until after Adam disobeyed God and sin entered the world at the time of the fall. As Romans 5:12 states, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Linking Geology to Theology

We’ve already discussed the importance of taking the flood account in Genesis (which occurred some 1,650 years after the fall) as historical. The flood account explains not only the origin of the majority of the fossil record but is also consistent theologically because all of the death, disease, and suffering recorded (in the sedimentary rocks found worldwide) would have occurred after the fall when sin and death entered into creation.

However, for those believers who’ve (perhaps innocently) accepted the secular world’s interpretations of the geologic record as being millions of years old, the question becomes “Where could those vast ages possibly be inserted into biblical history?” Logically, the only place to insert those ages would be somewhere within (or prior to) the six days of creation, regardless of what a person believes those “days” represent.

After creation, a tight chronological record listed an ongoing lineage of specific individuals that would be impossible to add deep time into. Adding millions of years into the six days of creation would mean it would not only be the rock layers that were laid down during the six days but also the things entombed within the rock that would have to have been laid down prior to when God declared everything he had made was “very good.”

However, what we find inside the rocks is a record of fatality, a massive number of fossils that testify to death, suffering, and disease having already occurred. All that would have happened prior to Adam sinning. So the effects of sin would already have been in the creation before Adam fell.

What then would Jesus’ physical death on the cross have to do with the payment of sin? If death existed before sin, then death isn’t the payment for sin. If death isn’t the payment for sin, then Jesus’ death does not pay our sin debt. That would mean Jesus’ sacrifice is spiritually impotent and practically meaningless.

Atheists Understand the True Meaning Behind the Story of Evolution

As surprising as it is that many Christians have not thought this through, many atheists have, illustrated by this quotation from an American Atheist magazine article titled “The Meaning of Evolution.”

Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. . . . If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.5

You see, abandoning the Genesis account as true history has had truly terrible consequences, both within and without the church. The Word of God says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).

The Logical Conclusions Related to Evolutionary “Deep Time”

God did not create the world with an active enemy within it, and yet for those believers who’ve adopted the secular timeline and attempted to add it to the Bible, they must logically conclude there was death in this world before Adam sinned.

To take this out of the realm of simply an intellectual argument when I am speaking to my brothers and sisters in Christ who hold to any of the old earth interpretations, I always ask them the following: “Would you be willing to say the following logically deduced implication of your position out loud? ‘I believe Jesus used billions of years of death, suffering, and disease to create the world and called it all very good, all before Adam sinned.’”

In over 25 years of ministry, I have never had a believer willing to say it audibly, even if they continue to hold to that conclusion theoretically, which, in my opinion, is quite telling.

Join us for Part 11, where we’ll discuss how many Christians have been misled by those within the church into undermining the foundation of their own faith and, in turn, helped contribute to the downfall of Western society as a whole.