I had this thought on Biblical Creation and trying to reconcile it with what the apparent age of the earth seems to be (millions of years according to the theory of evolution.)
Make no mistake, I believe that the earth is very young (thousands of years) which is in accordance with my understanding of the Genesis account, but this idea may help explain why or how we observe a universe that appears to be much older.
The basis of my thought is found in Jesus' first miracle - the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast. My assumptions include believing that actual water was turned into actual wine in the space of moments (less than an hour) and that the resulting wine was, according to the steward present, of top quality and that the wine contained alcohol (otherwise it would have just been grape juice.)
The point here is that Jesus was able to create a substance that had the appearance of being much older than the time it took to create it. Alcohol cannot be created instantly (without a miracle) as it takes the process of yeast turning sugar into alcohol, which is a product of time. So, Jesus, the creator of the universe (Colossians 1:16), is able to produce an item that is old or should be old by all normal reckoning.
That being said, is it not possible for God to create a universe (and the earth with it) that has the appearance of being millions (or billions) of years old even while it isn't even close to being that old?
Is it such a stretch of the imagination to think that when God created the stars that He also created the light from that star to already have traveled millions of lightyears so be be observable on the earth? In other words, God created in an instant something that had the appearance of being very old (because the light had already traveled such a great distance to reach earth) in order to make the star visible from earth.
I suppose I wanted to write this out so that my thoughts were set down in order and so I could muse on it more. I definitely am not trying to reconcile the theory of evolution and the theory of creation; I don't believe there is any way to reconcile those two as one says man came through death and the other says that death came through man.
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2 comments:
What do you suppose His purpose was in making a universe that only seemed to be very old?
An interesting question.
One of the reasons might be variety. I would think that on a young, newly formed universe you wouldn't have the stars in various stages of "life span."
I would think that stars all created at the same time would all be similar and not the diversity we observe today. A good idea of this diversity is found at
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/startypes.shtml
God could have just as well made all the stars the same, but it is even more impressive (and shows how awesome a God He is) to create such a wide variety.
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