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Monday, September 20, 2010

Episode 7 [Part 1] :: Question 8 on The Age of the World

7:36 PM | Posted by St. Burnish | Edit Post
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome

Question 8- Jonathan (United Kingdom): Thank you sir for this forum. Please sir, can you shed more light in accounting for the issue of the age of the world which scientists claim to be millions of years old. Does the bible support this view? Especially those of dinosaurs, prehistoric man, fossils and so on?

Answer 8: Yes, the bible does support the view that the world is probably millions of years old. It does, because we need to understand that the age of the world and the age of man in the earth are not the same. Man is about 6,000 years in the earth; actually, less. But, the world is much older than that. Now, you cannot tell the age of the world when you study the book of Genesis that tells us about creation. What we need to understand is that, in Genesis we are not given an account of the creation of the world but of the recreation of the world. So, the world was not created in the story that we have in Genesis but recreated in the story that we have in Genesis. When you study that whole chapter, you’ll get to understand it. There are just some key words that’ll help you understand. For example, in Genesis chapter 1, from verse 27 it says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” You can only replenish something that’s been there before! So, it says [continuing in verse 28], “…replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” [Genesis 1:27-28] So, He told them to replenish the earth, and that’s very, very important.

And if you notice how these things came to be, if you’ll read from verse 1 chapter 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the 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.” [Genesis 1:1-2] God couldn’t have created an earth without form [and void]. That means it was formless and empty; God couldn’t have done that. I’ll show you a scripture now. And it says, [Continuing from verse 2] “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” [Genesis 1:2-3] And so on and so forth - "let there be, let there be, let there be," - and that ‘let’ is not a creation word. See, it’s more of a permission word. So, God says "let there be" and this leaps into being, because He was replenishing the earth in this area, and He called man to do the same. So, what you have - the account in Genesis chapter 1 - is the account of recreation.

Now, in Genesis chapter 1, reading again from verse 1 into verse 2 for you; I want you to understand something. It says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the 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.” [Genesis 1:1-2] Now, verse 2 is not directly after verse 1. Now, bible scholars will tell you that there’s a major difference between verse 1 and verse 2. So, God didn’t make the earth empty; He didn’t create it empty and I’ll show that to you. He didn’t create the earth empty and void; He didn’t do that. But, because we have this verse 2, many people are prone to thinking that God created an empty world and the next verses He began to populate the earth. No, that’s not what happened! Let me read to you from the book of Isaiah chapter 45, [from verse 18] “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.” [Isaiah 45:18] Now, in Genesis chapter 1, when you read in verse 2, “And the earth was without form”; the term ‘without form’ is from a Hebrew word, ‘Tohuw’. It means to be vain (to be empty). And He says He didn’t create it that way. Now, that’s the same word that you have here in Isaiah chapter 45 verse 18, “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not [Tohuw]"; that means, not ‘without form’, as you have in Genesis. So, it became without form. In fact, the very Hebrew word that was translated ‘was’ before the ‘without form’ in Genesis chapter 1, is not ‘was’ as something in the past but ‘was’ as ‘it became’ - it became. So, it’ll read, "the earth became Tohuw [without form, empty]." So, it does tell us that there was a big difference between these two verses here. So, what in the world was in the world? What happened?

I’ll read to you what happened so you can understand; and that you’ll get from Jeremiah chapter 4 from verse 23, “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.” [Pastor Chris places emphasis here] …there was no man and all the birds of the heavens were fled. [Continuing from verse 26] “I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet I will not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and I will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.” [Jeremiah 4:23-28] Now, it tells you that there was some form of judgment on the earth and it says it was without form. This was the only time in history that we’re told that the earth was without form and void just like you read in Genesis. So, it’s referring to the same thing! There’s no other time, not in human history, where the earth was without form and completely void. So, it would have happened before Adam was created.

But then, it tells us something, it says [in verse 25] “…there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.” There was no man. Then, it says birds existed but there was no man. It tells us that there were some beings of some kind, some animals – birds. There were! So, these things are indicative. In fact, it does talk about cities [verse 26] and the word for ‘cities’ here - don’t imagine a city like New York or Lagos or something of that nature. No, He’s talking about buildings. Whether they were huts [or] whatever they were, they were buildings: made of earth, or wood, or nests. Whatever they were, He calls them buildings; that means living places, and they were destroyed. You know that some animals create for themselves living places. And so, what we’re saying here is that there were pre-Adamite creatures; that’s the idea here. There were pre-Adamite creatures. Now, we are not given the names of these pre-Adamite creatures. Whether they were dinosaurs or whatever they might have been called, the point is the scientific evidence that there were living creatures before man is supported by the bible.


Watch the full episode 7 - Part 1 [July 7, 2009] video here!
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1 comments:

Child*Of*Promise said...

WOW!!! Glory to God! I have the wisdom of God in me.

April 5, 2011 at 5:41 PM

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