A Scientific Approach To the Genesis Creation

I have been trying to figure out the first chapter of Genesis all of my life. I believe that a Creator God did the creating. But the structure of the chapter into creation “days” was hard to understand.
Were they real 24 hour days? Was Adam’s creation therefore about 6,000 years ago? Where did the dinosaurs fit in? How about the process of evolution of species as taught so prevalently?
For a good section of my life, I did believe that Adam was created 6,000 years ago, and that Noah’s Flood had to have been about 2,350 BC. What about the dinosaurs? I just wasn’t sure - were they before Adam or after Adam?
I tried to harmonize all the geological strata with the Flood. I even tried to say that God must have created the universe with the “appearance” of age - that is, trails of light from distant stars and galaxies were not really that old. After all, God created Adam, not as a baby, but with adult maturity so why not the whole universe the same way?
But in the last few years, I have changed my approach to Creation completely. I have been greatly influenced by Dr. Hugh Ross who is a Christian astrophysicist. He firmly believes in the Creator God, in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the world. And he also firmly believes in the “Big Bang” event about 14 billion years ago. He has written a number of books showing how the whole universe is anthropomorphic - that is, it has been designed and structured specifically for the benefit of the human race. He has a list of 150 things that had to be fine-tuned just right in the universe so that man could live on the Earth. If any one of these factors were just a percentage point or two different one way or the other, there could be no mankind on the Earth.
I want to present to you now Hugh Ross’ concepts about the Genesis Creation which I have come to accept as my own.
The Hebrew word yom translated “day” in Genesis One can have three meanings: 1. The daylight hours (roughly 12) 2. A whole 24 hour day or 3. An extended but finite time period. Here is a model for the “days” being an extended time period as proposed by scientist Hugh Ross.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [the whole universe] (Gen. 1:1)

14 billion years ago - the “big bang” creation of the entire physical universe.
13.5 to 5 billion - star and galaxy formation (a necessary foundation for the formation of the Earth's heavier elements which formed from star formation and disintegration).
4.75 billion - the Earth is formed.
4.5 billion - the moon is formed from collision of unknown planet with Earth.

And the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:2)

DAY ONE: And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. (Gen. 1:3-5)

4.5 to 4 billion years ago - clearing of the interplanetary debris and partial transformation of the Earth’s atmosphere so that LIGHT from the heavenly bodies now penetrates to the surface of the Earth’s ocean.
4.5 to 4 billion - heavy bombardment of Earth by asteroids.
4 billion - the Earth’s crust in ruin until then.

DAY TWO: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament - and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. (Gen. 1:6-8)

4 to 3.8 billion years ago - formation of water vapor in the atmosphere under conditions that establish a stable water cycle.

DAY THREE: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas; and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so. Gen. 1:9-11)

3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago - formation of continental land masses together with ocean basins.
3.5 billion - production of plants and the oldest fossils appear.

DAY FOUR: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years… and God made [appointed - they had already been made in DAY ONE] two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night…and God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1:14-18)

3.5 to 1 billion years ago - lights in the sky when the sun, moon and stars become visible by a transformation of the atmosphere from a translucent condition to one that is at least occasionally transparent.

DAY FIVE: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales and every living creature which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and the winged fowl after their kind. And God blessed them saying, Be fruitful and multiply… (Gen. 1:20-22)

1 billion to 1 million years ago - lower vertebrates and swarms of small sea animals formed.
500 million - Cambrian explosion of vast numbers of species as found in fossils.
250 million - prairies emerged from ancient seas.
250 to 65 million - Dinosaur period.
50 million - sea mammals and birds appeared.

DAY SIX: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so…And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish, the fowl, the cattle, and over every creeping thing upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it… (Gen. 1:24-28)

1 million to 35,000 years ago - specialized land mammals capable of interacting with the future human race appeared.
150,000 to 40,000 years - the age of sub-human Neanderthals.
50,000 to 35,000 years - somewhere in this range, THE CREATION OF MAN.

DAY SEVEN: And on the seventh day God rested from all His work which He had made. (Gen. 2:2)

35,000 years ago to the present and out into the future (The “Sabbath” of God will never end.)

30,000 to 25,000 years - European cave art and Australian aborigines.
25,000 to 20,000 years - Somewhere in this range, Noah’s Flood.
20,000 to 14,000 years - somewhere in this range, the scattering of nations from Babel.
14,000 years - passable land bridges between East and West.
9,000 to 8,000 years - organized agriculture in Mesopotamia.
8,000 to 6,000 years - cultures developed in Persia, Nile delta, India and Greece.
6,000 to 5,000 years - central Europe, the rest of Egypt, southern Russia and Arabia developed.
2015 BC - the birth of Abraham - after this follows the biblical dating of years accurately.

You may say that this sounds a lot like evolution to you. But notice that God created the “kinds” or species of the creatures - there is no evolution of species. The time element based on the geological scale is the same as evolution uses, but there is a radical difference in that there is a supernatural intervention by God all along the way.
Again, I say that everything that science is discovering on a day to day basis shows that man is God’s supreme creation. The universe and man’s location in it is all set up for the life and survival of man. God has a precious love for us. He purposes us to be children in His supernatural Family.
WHAT A GLORIOUS CREATION!


Dr. Hugh Ross’ website is:
http://www.reasons.org

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