Reasons to Believe Is Wrong. What Does the Bible Really Teach About the Earth’s Age?

In 2016, the old-earth creationist organization Reasons to Believe published the small book Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth written by their resident biochemist Dr. Fazale Rana. It was designed to convince lay audiences that the discoveries of red blood cells in a fossilized T. rex leg bone and various soft tissues and biochemicals in other fossils were compatible with the fossils being up to hundreds of millions of years old. The book was also intended to counter young-earth creationists’ championing these discoveries as being evidence of a young earth according to the framework of earth history as given to us in God’s Word.

The founder of Reasons to Believe, astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross, continues to promote this small book, perceiving its contents as unassailable as they apparently remain unanswered by young-earth creationists. To the contrary, the various arguments used by Dr. Rana in his small book have been repeatedly debunked by young-earth creationists in the ensuing years in scattered articles and within books but not concentrated into a comprehensive response. So it is overdue for a targeted response to be assembled here that comprehensively exposes how futile and deceitful Dr. Rana’s attempted critique of what still remains as a valid, powerful young-earth evidence, namely, the soft tissues and biochemicals found in many fossils, including but not limited to dinosaurs.

How then does Dr. Rana lay out his case that the dinosaur red blood cells, soft tissues, and biochemicals found in many fossils are compatible with those fossils supposedly being up to hundreds of millions of years old? After a brief introduction, his small book consists of four chapters:

Chapter 1: Dinosaur Blood in Fossils: Who Would Believe It?
Chapter 2: Dinosaur Blood and the Case for a Young Earth
Chapter 3: Radiometric Dating and the Age of the Earth
Chapter 4: How Did Soft Tissues Survive in Dinosaur Fossils?

His concluding chapter, titled “Should You Believe It or Not?,” is followed by three appendixes presenting “A Biblical Case for an Old Earth,” “The Creation-Evolution Controversy in Jurassic World,” and “Dinosaur Genome Size Estimates: Lagerstätten of Design.”

In a nutshell, his line of reasoning is that since the Bible contains a case for an old earth contrary to the young-earth creationists’ biblical “interpretation” and since radiometric dating is reliable and scientists have used it to prove the earth’s rock layers and their contained fossils are indeed hundreds of millions of years old, then the earth, its rock layers, and its fossils are irrefutably hundreds of millions of years old. Consequently, since the dinosaur red blood cells, soft tissues, and biochemicals found in various fossils are genuine, then they must have survived for hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore, he thinks, even though we are not yet sure how they survived for hundreds of millions of years, we now know of several feasible processes, which have been tested over several years in laboratory experiments and thus potentially individually or collectively can be extrapolated back to the ancient past to have thus likely preserved these soft tissues and biochemicals. Is Dr. Rana correct in every detail of his line of reasoning?

And is he correct in claiming that the young-earth creationist position—that God created the earth, the universe and all life in six, normal (literal) 24-hour days only 6,000–7,000 years ago—causes many seekers and skeptics alike to reject Christian truth claims and believers to doubt their faith?1 Such serious accusations need a thorough, decisive response.

Let’s first examine his claim that the Bible contains a case for an old earth contrary to the young-earth creationists’ biblical “interpretation.” After all, if the Bible is the inerrant Word of the infallible Creator God, a statement Dr. Rana says he agrees with,2 it must be our absolute authority on which all our reasoning should be based.

What Does God Say About the Length of the Creation Days?

On page 81 of his book, Dr. Rana asserts, “A common misconception among Christians (as well as non-Christians) is that the only valid reading of Genesis 1 is the calendar-day view.”

Dr. Rana takes aim at young-earth creationists because “these Christians interpret the ‘days’ in Genesis 1 as 24 hours in duration. Consequently, they maintain that Earth and its life can only be 6,000–10,000 years old.”3

Furthermore, “They consider their interpretation of the Genesis 1 creation account to be the only correct reading of the text.”4

It is a common “throw-away” claim by old-earth Christians such as Dr. Rana that young-earth creationists (YECs) interpret the days in Genesis 1 as 24-hour days. But is that merely “their interpretation”?

Since Dr. Rana claims to be a “conservative evangelical”5 and even though he claims not to be a biblical scholar,6 he should know that conservative, evangelical, biblical scholars maintain adamantly that to understand a passage in God’s Word, one should not only study words in context but also always seek insight from other biblical passages. Indeed, Dr. Rana does exactly that by trying to use (out of context) other passages of Scripture to promote his old-earth interpretation, such as 2 Peter 3:5, Proverbs 8:22–23, Psalm 68:33, and Genesis 49:26 (discussed later).7

So it is critically necessary to ask: Does God elsewhere in His Word provide His commentary on the days in Genesis 1? Yes, absolutely, in two passages Dr. Rana assiduously avoids, namely, Exodus 20:8–11 and Exodus 31:14–17. Here in Exodus, God twice commands the children of Israel to work for six days and rest on the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. And what was God’s reason?

For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:11)

It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. (Exodus 31:17)

God was clearly teaching the children of Israel and us that His creation days in Genesis 1 were identical in length to the days on our calendar.

So how were the children of Israel to understand what were the lengths of the creation days? If the creation days were “long, finite periods of time—epochs—not calendar days” as Dr. Rana claims,8 then since God was using his creation days as an example for the children of Israel to follow, they would have had to conclude that God wanted them to work for six long, finite periods of time (epochs) before they could take an epoch to rest! No, God was clearly teaching the children of Israel and us that His creation days in Genesis 1 were identical in length to the days on our calendar. Indeed, there is no other basis for the seven-day week on our calendars outside of Genesis 1, Exodus 20:11, and Exodus 31:17. Furthermore, and of crucial importance, God not only gave this commandment to Moses and the children of Israel verbally, but He actually wrote “in six days” on the tablets of stone Moses brought down to the people from Mt. Sinai:

It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. When He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God. (Exodus 31:17–18, emphasis mine)

Elsewhere in God’s Word, we are told that holy men wrote down Scripture “as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21 NKJV) so that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). However, in Exodus 31:18, we are told that God actually wrote the words that we now read! Dr. Rana, could God be any clearer in telling us his creation days were the same as our calendar days? And how can God’s declaration of his creation days being the same as our calendar days be an “interpretation” by young-earth creationists? To argue against God’s commentary on the lengths of His creation days is arguing against God Himself!

But Can’t Yom Mean a Long Period of Time?

However, there is more! On page 78 of his book, Dr. Rana correctly asserts:

As in the English language, the Hebrew word yom—translated as day—can refer to: (1) part of a day; (2) the time from sun up to sun down; (3) a calendar day; or (4) a long but finite period of time, an epoch.

By then he wrongly claims:

A literal reading of Genesis 1 would allow one to translate yom as either 24 hours or as an epoch. The day-age view is just as much a literal reading of the Genesis 1 creation account as is the YEC interpretation.

To the contrary, conservative evangelical biblical scholars would assert emphatically that to understand what a Hebrew word means in any Scripture passage, one must always look at both the context of the usage of that Hebrew word in the passage and look at the usages and contexts of the same Hebrew word in all other Scripture passages in which it occurs. So what do we find when we investigate the usage and context of the Hebrew word yom where it occurs 2,301 times in the Old Testament?

Outside Genesis 1, we find9

• 410 times where yom (whether singular or plural) is preceded by a number, and it always means an ordinary calendar day.
• 38 times where yom is used together with “evening” and “morning,” it always means an ordinary calendar day.
• 23 times where yom is used with either “evening” or “morning,” it always means an ordinary calendar day.

Using this knowledge, what do we find in Genesis 1?

• Verse 5 – “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
• Verse 8 – “And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.”
• Verse 13 – “And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.”
• Verse 19 – “And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.”
• Verse 23 – “And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.”
• Verse 31 – “And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

Whenever yom is preceded by a number and is used with “evening” and “morning,” it always only ever means an ordinary calendar day!

Everywhere else in the Old Testament outside of Genesis 1 whenever yom is preceded by a number and is used with “evening” and “morning,” it always only ever means an ordinary calendar day! Yet we observe this is the exact formula used in Genesis 1, and it is repeated six times. Why would the usage of yom in Genesis 1 be different from everywhere else it is used in the Old Testament? The Holy Spirit could not have made it any clearer. And remember, Genesis 1 is God’s eyewitness account of the creation of the heaven and earth and “all that is in them” (Exodus 20:11). So not only did God with his own finger write on the tablets of stone as a testimony the words “in six days” as calendar days in which the children of Israel worked (Exodus 31:17–18), but in Genesis 1, He very clearly defines what yom means! We should also note that God tells us in Genesis 1:14 that He created the sun, moon, and stars so that people could tell time. And the movement of those heavenly bodies do enable us to measure literal years, literal seasons, and literal days.

Dr. Rana, based on God’s Word and His own written testimony, yom in Genesis 1 is a calendar day. And that is emphatically not a “YEC interpretation”!

Yet Dr. Rana on pages 78–79 insists:

From my perspective, several signifiers in the Genesis 1 account indicate that the best reading of yom in Genesis 1 is as a long but finite period of time. For example, the first day of creation describes the genesis of the day-night cycle. That is, the first calendar day was created on the first creation day. This scenario strongly implies that the creation days must be epochs, not 24-hour periods.

But it totally defies logic to say that because the first calendar day was created on the first creation day then that scenario strongly implies that the creation days must be epochs, not 24-hour periods! To the contrary, the creation of the first calendar day on the first creation day emphatically implies the creation days were calendar days!

Not to be deterred, Dr. Rana next claims:

Another compelling clue is found in Genesis 2:4. In this passage, the word yom—translated as day—refers to the entirety of the creation week. So within the context of the Genesis 1 account, there is at least one instance in which yom clearly refers to a time frame that is much longer than 24 hours. This usage opens the door to interpret the other occurrences of yom in the same way.10

Dr. Rana is partially right that in Genesis 2:4, yom is used; however, he is emphatically wrong in his conclusion. Unlike in Genesis 1, Genesis 2:4 does not have yom modified by a number, evening, and morning but yom with a single Hebrew letter prefix “b,” which often means “in” turning it into an adverbial prepositional phrase: b^eyom. Hence, Bible translators render it as “in the day that” or simply “when.” As such, in that context and following what we are already told in Genesis 1, b^eyom refers to the entirety of the creation week and functions as a summary overview statement. But this different use of yom emphatically does not open the door to interpret the occurrences of yom in Genesis 1 as a period of time longer than a normal, 24-hour day. The Genesis 2:4 usage is not a commentary on the meaning of yom in Genesis 1, just as it is not in Numbers 7:10–84.11

Then finally, Dr. Rana gives his third “compelling” reason:

Finally, the omission of the phrase, “And there was evening and there was morning . . .” from the description of the seventh day suggests that the creation days are epochs, not calendar days. “Evening and morning” are used to connote the conclusion of each of the first six creation days. The fact that this expression is not used for the seventh day implies that this creation day has not ended. Elsewhere in Scripture (Hebrews 4:9, for example), we learn that God’s people can still enter into His Sabbath rest. Again, this passage indicates that we are still in the seventh day. In other words, the seventh day of the creation account represents a period of time, not a calendar day. Correspondingly, the other creation days, too, should be understood as periods of time, not 24 hours.12

Again, his logic is flawed. The absence of “there was evening and there was morning” in God’s description of the seventh creation day does not imply that seventh creation day has not ended. To the contrary, when God commanded the children of Israel to keep the Sabbath as a calendar day of rest after six calendar days of work, His example was His seventh calendar day of rest after His six calendar days of creation work and He wrote this with His finger on the tablets of testimony (Exodus 20:8–11, 31:14–18). To claim that the seventh creation day, the Sabbath, has not ended contradicts the clear teaching of Exodus 20:11.

Furthermore, if we are still in that seventh day, then God is still resting and not doing any more work. Yet how is it that Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working”? Indeed, Jesus the Creator (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2) did creative work when He turned water into wine (John 2:1–11) and broke a few loaves of bread and a few fish to feed thousands (Matthew 14:13–21, 15:32–38; Mark 6:30–34, 8:1–9; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–13). And God is continually at work sustaining His creation (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). If God weren’t still working, the universe would fall apart!

Hebrews 4:3–6 does not teach that the seventh day continues to the present, but that God has finished and continues to rest from His creation work. After Genesis 2:3, God and Jesus occasionally did creation miracles. And God continually does His work of providentially sustaining and upholding His creation. And ever since the fall of Adam, God has been doing His work of redeeming repentant sinners. But He is not now creating in the Genesis 1 sense of creation. Besides, His Sabbath rest in the context of Hebrews 4:9 is talking about the promised land for the wilderness-wandering children of Israel and our eternal rest in our heavenly home for God’s people today. Nowhere in Hebrews 4:3–9 does it say that the seventh day continues. It is God’s rest from creation work that continues. Reading into the text what it does not say and plucking verses out of context and applying them to an entirely different context in God’s Word is a serious mishandling of Scripture.

And since God is not now creating but sustaining His creation, the processes of nature that scientists now study are not the processes by which God created as described in Genesis 1. That was supernatural creation, not creation by presently observed natural processes, as secular scientists believe and Dr. Rana and Reasons to Believe claim.

Could the Activity Described in Genesis 1–2 Have Fit into Six Calendar Days?

But not to be outdone, Dr. Rana next “drags out” the oft-repeated claim of skeptics that all the activity described in Genesis 2 as occurring on the sixth creation day in Genesis 1 could never have fit into a calendar day. After all, how could God have planted a garden and grown it fully for Adam to live in, and how could Adam have named all the animals in just a calendar (24-hour) day?

These claims have been repeatedly answered.13 The Genesis text does not say that God used natural means to grow the plants in the garden. To the contrary, during the latter part of creation day three described in Genesis 1:11–12, God created fruit trees already bearing fruit and other trees already bearing seeds, which is not natural growth. Why could God not have planted similar “mature” (fully formed) trees in the garden to have it immediately ready for Adam? After all, Jesus the Creator instantly turned water into mature wine (John 2:1–11), demonstrating His power to instantly create instead of using lengthy natural processes. In fact, the master of that wedding feast in Cana wrongly interpreted the evidence by using his fallible reasoning to think the best wine must have taken years to be produced, when he should have asked the servants who witnessed Jesus’ miracle.

And how many animals did Adam, the perfect man, have to name? The Genesis 2 text says it was only the animals and birds in the garden that God brought to Adam to name. And these were not all the species of such animals and birds we have today. They were only representatives of each created “kind” (baramin) of such animals and birds. So for example, all of today’s species of ducks, geese, and swans belong to the one created kind because they can all interbreed.14 Thus, Adam only had to name one representative pair in the duck-geese-swan kind, and therefore, the number of kinds was small enough for Adam, with intelligence untainted by sin and corruption, to name representatives of each relevant created kind all within a few hours.

The Real Reason Dr. Rana Embraces Millions of Years

So why, in the face of this crystal clear testimony of God’s inerrant Word, does Dr. Rana embrace the view that the creation days in Genesis 1 are long finite periods of time, epochs? He writes,

The day-age view makes it possible to embrace the antiquity of Earth and life on Earth, without compromising the primacy of the creation accounts found in Scripture. Instead of interpreting Genesis 1 in a way that conflicts with science, the day-age view provides a pathway that leads to harmony between science and Christianity.15

Dr. Rana is saying that Scripture needs to be interpreted to make it in harmony with “science”!

What Dr. Rana is saying is that Scripture needs to be interpreted to make it in harmony with “science”! And in the context of his book, by “science” he obviously means conventional mainstream science and the billions of years of uniformitarian earth history embraced by the vast majority of scientists, including many scientists who are Christians. Thus, Dr. Rana regards the scientific consensus as his absolute authority, rather than God’s Word, which he agrees is inerrant.16 Yet the inerrant Word of God is crystal clear that the creation day (yom) in Genesis 1 was a calendar day, confirmed by God’s testimony, which He physically wrote on tablets of stone.

When was truth determined by majority vote, the consensus of fallible, finite scientists? Jesus made it abundantly clear in Matthew 7:13–14 that the majority will not always be right but wrong:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Only eight people survived the Flood because they alone entered through the door of the ark (Genesis 7:6–7, 13; 2 Peter 2:5). The majority were wrong and perished, being “blotted out” by God in the floodwaters (Genesis 7:21–23).

Why should we embrace the consensus of finite, fallible non-Christian scientists as our absolute authority, rather than the inerrant Word of the infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God who never lies (Titus 1:2)? Indeed, the very first temptation of Adam and Eve (our first parents) by Satan (the serpent-deceiver opposed to God and His Word) was “Did God actually say?” (Genesis 3:2). And this is exactly what the Apostle Paul warns us about in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

Paul is concerned lest our thoughts are led astray by Satan’s cunning in questioning God’s Word! Did God really say in six (calendar) days He worked to create everything and thus the children of Israel should work for six calendar days before resting on the seventh calendar day of the week?

Not to be deterred, Dr. Rana insists, “Yet, there are very good biblical reasons to think that the creation days refer to long, finite periods of time—epochs—not calendar days.”17

So what other “biblical” reasons does he offer?

Are the Creation Days Just Chronological Representatives?

Dr. Rana recommends to his readers four books that provide a more detailed and comprehensive defense of the OEC (old-earth creationist) perspective (along with references to the theological literature) by four scientists—an astronomer and three physicists, one of the latter also being “a Hebrew scholar.” But Dr. Steven Boyd, who is also a physicist and a Hebrew scholar, has demonstrated with absolute statistical certainty, by examining the Hebrew verbs in Genesis 1 compared to usage of the Hebrew verbs in numerous other Old Testament passages, that Genesis 1 is a literal historical narrative in which the creation days are calendar days.18

Then, Dr. Rana insists,

The day-age view treats Genesis 1 as a divine natural history. Accordingly, the creation days present a chronological ordering of God’s creative acts. But instead of providing an exhaustive description of everything God did, the creation days represent “snap shots” of God’s handiwork, throughout the course of Earth’s and life’s history.19

If that is so, Dr. Rana, then why doesn’t the chronological ordering of God’s creative acts in the Genesis 1 divine natural history exactly match the order of “creation” according to the consensus of uniformitarian scientists (astrophysicists and geologists)? For example:

1. According to uniformitarian scientists, the sun was formed millions of years before the earth, whereas Genesis 1 says God created the earth on day one and the sun only on day four, along with the other stars and the moon.
2. According to uniformitarian scientists, the earth was initially covered by a magma ocean as it formed over millions of years from the solar nebula, whereas Genesis 1 says the earth was completely covered with water when God created it on day one. In fact, the Bible says the earth was completely covered with water twice: the first two days of creation and Noah’s Flood. But the uniformitarian scientists say it has never been completely covered with water.
3. According to uniformitarian scientists, the sun shone light on the earth when it was formed out of the solar nebula, whereas Genesis 1 says light was created on day one and the sun was not created until day four.
4. According to uniformitarian scientists, the sun and the earth were formed billions of years before land plants appeared on the earth, whereas Genesis 1 says land plants and fruit trees were created on day three before the sun and the stars were created on day four.
5. According to uniformitarian scientists, fish were living millions of years before land plants, whereas Genesis 1 says land plants including fruit trees were created on day three before the fish were created on day five.
6. According to uniformitarian scientists, reptiles, including dinosaurs, were alive millions of years before birds, whereas Genesis 1 says birds were created on day five and reptiles and dinosaurs were created on day six.

It is thus obvious that God’s chronological order of His creative handiwork on successive creation days emphatically does not match the supposed snapshots throughout the course of earth’s and life’s history according to the uniformitarian scientific consensus that Dr. Rana believes. So, Dr. Rana, who is telling us the true chronological order of the history of the earth and life? Is it the finite, fallible uniformitarian scientists (controlled by a naturalistic, anti-biblical worldview) who never witnessed the universe’s history or God the Creator who has always existed and was present when He created to tell us about the order in which He created everything?

Do These Passages Support an Old Earth?

Finally, Dr. Rana lists a number of passages throughout the Old and New Testaments that he claims make direct statements about the antiquity of the earth and its features. They are from the NIV and with his emphases added:20

But they deliberately forgot that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed, and the earth was formed out of water and by water. (2 Peter 3:5)

The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. (Proverbs 8:22–23)

To him who rides the ancient skies above, who thunders with mighty voice. (Psalm 68:33)

Your father’s blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills. (Genesis 49:26)

With the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains and the fruitfulness of the everlasting hills. (Deuteronomy 33:15)

He stood and shook the earth; he looked, and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal. (Habakkuk 3:6)

The River Kishon swept them away, the age-old river, the River Kishon. (Judges 5:21)

To children, their great-grandparents look and sound ancient and they were born long ago, just as to the Apostle Peter, God created the heavens and the earth long ago. Similarly, the Egyptian civilization and its pharaohs are today studied in what all academics call ancient history because those pharaohs lived long ago and did what are now considered as deeds of old. Yet the Egyptian civilization only existed a few thousand years ago (not millions!). In other words, it is a matter of perspective.

For the biblical writers, like humans today, the hills look age-old and everlasting and the mountains ancient. However, those observations do not make the hills old or everlasting or the mountains ancient. Dr. Rana is reading into these texts something contrary to what the writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, intended these texts to mean. The Holy Spirit would not have deliberately guided the writers to pen texts that were contrary to what God wrote with His own finger on the tablets of testimony (Exodus 31:14–18), that is, He created everything in six days that were calendar days because He was setting an example to the children of Israel (and us) to work for six calendar days and then rest on the seventh calendar day.

These Old and New Testament verses cannot be used to claim billions of years antiquity for the earth in opposition to the clear statements in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 and 31 that God created everything during six calendar days.

These Old and New Testament verses cannot be used to claim billions of years antiquity for the earth in opposition to the clear statements in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 and 31 that God created everything during six calendar days. Furthermore, those seven calendar days of the creation week are followed by the direct father-son genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 and the subsequent recorded history from Genesis 12 onward that provides a human chronology from the creation of Adam on calendar day six of the creation week to the birth of Christ that is only 4,000–4,500 years long. Adding tens of thousands of years (to say nothing of millions of years) into Genesis 5 and 11 (as Dr. Rana and Dr. Ross have repeatedly attempted) is impossible, as Dr. Terry Mortenson showed in his five-minute closing argument in his debate against Hugh Ross in 2024 on the subject of inerrancy and the age of the creation.21 Furthermore, that human chronology was utilized by both Luke (Luke 3:23–38) and Matthew (Matthew 1:1–17) to establish Jesus Christ’s direct lineage back to Adam through Abraham and thus making Him our kinsman redeemer and the true Messiah promised by God in the garden in Genesis 3:15. And thus the Apostle Paul can call the Lord Jesus Christ both the last and second Adam (“the man from heaven”) in 1 Corinthians 15:45–49 because Jesus was literally descended from Adam. But whereas the first Adam failed in the garden, the second Adam was sinless and thus could be the perfect “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Should We Promote an Old Earth to Win Skeptics?

Dr. Rana concludes his “case” for his day-age progressive creation view of God’s Word with these comments:

There are many compelling biblical and theological reasons to embrace this [OEC] interpretation. One huge reason is this: the way Christians read Genesis 1 can have a profound impact on their ability to reach others for Christ. A common misconception among Christians (as well as non-Christians) is that the only valid reading of Genesis 1 is the calendar-day view. This causes believers to doubt their faith and leads skeptics and seekers to reject Christianity because they reject the notion that the earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old—an interpretation that is in clear conflict with the scientific record.

However there are many compelling biblical reasons to accept an old-earth perspective, removing a serious objection that skeptics and seekers have to the Christian faith. Hopefully, we can work together to remove unnecessary barriers to faith, making it possible for nonbelievers to entertain the gospel.22

But as I have shown, it is crystal clear from the context of Genesis 1—in which the usage of yom in Genesis 1 preceded by a numeral and each yom having an evening and morning compared with every other such usage of yom throughout the rest of the Old Testament, and God’s commentary in Exodus 20:8–11 and 31:14–18 written by God’s finger on the tablets of testimony—that the calendar-day view of yom is the only valid biblical reading of Genesis 1. To say otherwise is to accuse the infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God who never lies (Titus 1:2) of gross communication incompetence or rank deception!

Yes, the calendar-day, young-earth creationist view is in clear conflict with the majority secular (and anti-Christian) interpretation of the scientific record, which is why some believers doubt their faith. But it is not primarily why skeptics and seekers reject Christianity. It is the gospel itself that is offensive to unbelievers and skeptics, as the Apostle Paul declares:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. . . . But we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness. (1 Corinthians 1:18–23)

Furthermore, how can the record of the Gospels be believed unless the history that explains why we need a Savior is trustworthy—including that God created a perfect world at the beginning and that man subsequently rebelled against his Creator, bringing His judgment curse on the whole creation (Genesis 3:14–19, 5:29; Romans 8:19–23)?

What Dr. Rana forgets, or chooses to ignore, is that the geological record that he accepts as taking billions of years to form is a record of disease, violence, bloodshed, and death of countless creatures and extinction of whole species preserved in those rock layers as fossils. Thus, according to Dr. Rana, when God had finished creating everything and declared it all as “very good” (Genesis 1:31), all that record of disease, violence, bloodshed, death, and mass extinctions seen in those fossils in the rock layers beneath Adam’s feet was “very good.” And thus, according to Dr. Rana’s logic, the world today with its disease, violence, bloodshed, and death must likewise be “very good.” Such a notion is an affront to the perfection and holy character of the Almighty Creator God in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (James 1:17).

It is the calendar-day, young-earth creationist view that removes the barrier of billions of years of disease, violence, bloodshed, and death, which is a stumbling block to the gospel for unbelievers and skeptics.

If death and suffering were part of God’s “very good” creation, why would we need a Savior? What is He saving us from? The gospel makes no sense to the unbeliever and skeptic because of the billions of years of disease, violence, bloodshed, and death promoted by old-earth progressive creationists like Dr. Rana. To the contrary, it is the calendar-day, young-earth creationist view that removes the barrier of billions of years of disease, violence, bloodshed, and death, which is a stumbling block to the gospel for unbelievers and skeptics. The disease, violence, bloodshed, and death are instead the result of the curse that God placed on the whole creation when Adam sinned. And the fossils recording disease, violence, bloodshed, and death were buried subsequently during the yearlong, global Flood cataclysm, as testified in the Genesis account, the events of which God Himself is a faithful eyewitness. Further note that it is 200 years of Christian compromise with millions of years and evolution (not the teaching of young-earth creation) that undermined biblical authority and thus has turned the once-Christian Western Europe and North America into the nations dominated by atheism and gross immorality. If Genesis 1–11 is not literal history, then of course people will reject the gospel and biblical morality that are rooted in that literal history. Drs. Rana and Ross and Reasons to Believe are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

If it really took God billions of years to create the first heavens and earth according to Dr. Rana’s old-earth creationist view, then how long will we have to wait for God to create the new heavens and the new earth? God said through the prophet Isaiah, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (Isaiah 65:17 ESV).

No, Dr. Rana, since we all believe that God will create the new heavens and new earth almost instantly, how can you not believe that the same all-powerful Creator God instantly created the original heavens and earth we now live on in six calendar days? He didn’t even need a whole six calendar days.

The earth may look old through eyes tuned to today’s slow-and-gradual processes, just as the wine at the Cana marriage feast looked old (John 2:1–11), but Jesus created that mature wine almost instantly just as God created the earth virtually instantly.

Sadly, the real reason Dr. Rana and other old-earth advocates believe the earth is 4.57 billion years old is because of their belief in the conventional scientists’ radiometric dating being more infallible than God’s Word! So to those radiometric dating methods, we will turn in Part 2 of the critique of Dr. Rana’s book on dinosaurs and the age of the earth.