age of Earth Archives

August 8, 2025August 8, 2025

Earth’s Age Is Irrelevant

How old is planet Earth? Why does it matter? Various branches of science agree, based on substantial evidence, that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old. Many Christians argue that it is only a few thousand years old, and they make it a matter of faith. In other words, if you disagree with their timeline, you are an evolutionist and Bible denier. Scientists have methods for calculating Earth’s age, and they have nothing to do with faith or denying the Bible. The truth is that Earth’s age is irrelevant to Christian faith.

Why do many Christians insist on a “young” Earth? It may be because they believe the Bible says so. They base that on a document written by an archbishop of the Church of Ireland, James Ussher, published in 1654. He calculated that Earth’s creation took place on October 22, 4004 B.C. He based his calculations on the assumption that the genealogies of Genesis are complete and that they are recorded for the purpose of chronology. Those assumptions are not correct. The biblical genealogies are incomplete, and their purpose is to show lineage, not chronology. Of course, the lineage eventually led to the Messiah. Because early English translations of the Bible included Ussher’s chronology, many came to believe it was the gospel truth.

Another significant reason many Christians today choose to believe in the young-earth doctrine is that they think it refutes evolution. Scientists don’t insist on billions of years to allow time for evolution. A little-known fact that scientists are reluctant to admit is that 4.5 billion years is not long enough for unguided evolution to create the diversity of life on Earth today. In reality, no amount of time is sufficient for random mutations and natural selection to accomplish the task. But not all of the 4.5 billion years are available for evolution. A large amount of time would be required for the planet to cool and become suitable for life. Then, more time would be needed for non-living elements to organize themselves into the first living cells. (They couldn’t do it by themselves in any amount of time, but that’s another issue.)

The bottom line is that Earth’s age is irrelevant to Christian faith. The age of the Earth is essential to the sciences of geology, paleontology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and others. As it relates to the Christian faith and the accuracy of the Bible, Earth’s age is irrelevant and always will be. Archbishop Ussher was an intelligent church leader and scholar, but his chronology fails because he based it on false assumptions. False assumptions lead to false conclusions.

August 7, 2021August 6, 2021

Is it True that the Earth Really Orbits the Sun?

Is it true that the Earth really orbits the Sun, or does the Sun orbit the Earth? That may sound like a dumb question to people living in the 21st century, but there are passages in the Bible that say the Earth is fixed and others that say the Sun moves. Consider these examples:

Ecclesiastes 1:5– “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.”
1 Chronicles 16:30 and Psalms 93:1– “…the world is established; it shall never be moved.”
Psalms 104:5– “He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved.”
See also Psalms 19:4-6 and 1 Samuel 2:8. Remember that Joshua told the Sun to stand still, not the Earth.

Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and the Catholic Church all viewed the Bible as saying the Earth was fixed in space. Some of the attacks on Copernicus in 1543 and Galileo in 1632 involved resistance to the idea that the Earth really orbits the Sun.

One of my favorite activities with my high school students was to ask them how they knew the Earth orbits the Sun. While I wasn’t allowed to quote the Bible, I would use the same ideas involved in the above verses. Everyone knows that the Sun rises and sets. If the Earth orbited the Sun, wouldn’t it fly off into outer space? I even used a demonstration using a ball on a string and swinging it around my head. The purpose was to show that massive objects (like a planet) orbiting around a center would obey centrifugal force and fly off. During PTA night, I even had one parent say that he knew the Earth didn’t orbit the Sun.

The lesson here (as we have mentioned before) is failing to take the Bible literally. When you read the Bible, you have to look at who wrote it, to whom they were writing, why they wrote it, and how the people to whom it was written would have understood it. You have to realize what Jesus means when He says in John 6:48, “I am the bread of life,” or John 10:9, where He says He is “the door.” Obviously, that question is answered if we look at the context of the statement.

Saying the Sun rises is very similar, and we do it all the time. The frame of reference is the observer, and the Bible passage is not explaining astronomy. The evidence is clear that the Earth is moving, but it wasn’t until 1725 that accepted evidence proved it. The Earth really orbits the Sun.

Those who use the Bible to justify their denominational belief that the Earth is 6,000 years old are not taking the Bible literally. Ignoring evidence or failing to use common sense is not taking it literally. The Earth isn’t fixed in space, and it is not 6,000 years old.

July 23, 2021July 17, 2021

The Age of the Earth and the Bible

One issue that seems never to go away is the age of the Earth. I frequently get letters from people saying, “If I didn’t have to believe the Earth is 6000 years old, I would be a Christian.”

The root of this problem is those who believe in the denominational doctrine of dispensationalism spend massive amounts of money attempting to justify their ideology. The list of promotors of this denominational tradition is vast. It started with John Nelson Darby, Cyrus Scofield, and D.L. Moody. These men published study Bibles and promoted the idea of seven discrete dispensations. The final dispensation is supposed to involve Israel becoming the world’s capital with Jesus Christ the King reigning from Jerusalem.

The televangelists of our day have modified some of that but have promoted much of it, including the young age of the Earth. The list of promoters of some version of dispensationalism is huge: Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, Eric Sauer, John Hagee, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, Paul Crouch, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart, just to name a few.

Unfortunately, dispensationalism is a major misunderstanding of the Bible and the nature of God and Jesus. Jesus will not be coming to wage a physical military war with the Chinese, Russians, or anyone else. “My kingdom is not of this world” does not involve any nation – including Israel. Joshua 23:14 tells us that God had fulfilled all the promises He made to Abraham. Colossians 2:8-14 makes it clear that Jesus took out all of the ancient teachings and laws connected with Israel as He established His Church – a spiritual kingdom. Ephesians 2:1-22 and Galatians 3:26-29 emphasize the oneness of the spiritual kingdom, with no nationalities or warfare of any kind.

The attempt to promote Israel’s physical domination of all Earth’s people started early in Church history. In Acts 15, the first century Christians dealt with attempts to promote Jewish tradition in the Church, and they rejected it. Jesus had difficulty getting His followers to understand that His kingdom was “not of this world (John 18:36), and we have the same battle today.

The bottom line is that the Bible does not tell us the age of the Earth. Yet, tragically, preaching schools and some Christian colleges continue to parrot the teachings of dispensationalism while denying that they are. The graduates of these schools and colleges go out and drive people away from God by promoting this denominational tradition that is wrong historically, scientifically, and logically. Tomorrow we want to look at some scientific and logical problems with this denominational teaching.