Young Earth or Old Earth?

[gbausc]

Shlama Akhi Chuck,

I have said pretty much all I wish to say to you on the days of creation, except for this on your last quote to me:

So does that statement mean that we are in agreement that the Scripture declares that God created the Heaven and the Earth before the 1st day began

It really is a fallacy to talk of God creating Heaven and Earth before day one began, because it is tantamount to saying that God created time before time began. The universe consists of time,space and matter-no more, no less. We cannot reasonably speak of matter and space apart from events occurring (time) on the sub atomic, atomic, molecular and macroscopic levels. All that Genesis 1:1-5 says God created and did, happened on day one. Nothing He made was made "before the 1st day". The beginning of creation is the beginning of time. That is why the New Testament statement of our Lord, "In the beginning, He made them male and female."- Mark 10:6 is so important, as well as the passage in Matthew 19:4-8

4 And he answered and said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made them at the beginning, made them a male and a female?
5 And he said: For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and adhere to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.
6 Wherefore they were not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath united, let not man sunder.
7 They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put her away?
8 He said to them: Moses, on account of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to divorce your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

"In the beginning" is understood to refer to Genesis 1:1 as the beginning of the creation. If man was made "at the beginning", as our Lord says, the days of creation could not have been 1000 years long, or more, each. Even if the first three days were considered 1000 years or more each, man would have not been made at the beginning, but closer to the middle of time which had passed up to that point -(which would have been 7000 yrs. after the beginning of creation;approx. 4000 years after Adam's creation). But if the 1000 year day is supported for the first 3 days, it must be supported for all of them. In that case, Adam and Eve were created during the last half of the creation's existence- definitely not "the beginning" of Genesis`1. That would make our Lord's words misleading and inaccurate. But He obviously viewed Genesis in a straightforward fashion as the Jews of His day did: The days were days, years were years, seasons were seasons,signs were signs.
?? And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: Genesis 1:14
Heaven and Earth were created at the beginning; so were Adam and Eve, according to Yeshua.

Blessings,

Dave