Six Thousand Years:

The Bible says the world is about six thousand years old. How do we arrive at that number?

The Bible provides a complete genealogy from Adam to Jesus. You can go through the genealogies and add up the years. You'll get a total that is just over 4,000 years. Add the 2,000 years since the time of Jesus and you get just over 6,000 years since God created everything.

Is there anything wrong with figuring out the age of the earth this way? No. There is nothing to indicate the genealogies are incomplete. There is nothing to indicate God left anything out. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates in any way that the world is older than 6,000 years old.

The Bible does tell us, however, that the fossils we find could not have been buried before God created Adam. The animals whose bones became fossilized had to have died after God created Adam. That means those fossils must be less than 6,000 yers old. Here's why:

How do we get fossils?

The animal has to first die. That's rather obvious. When did death enter the world? Not until Genesis chapter three when Adam and Eve disobey God. So up until that time neither people nor animals died. So, based on the Bible, there could not be any bones to create fossils until after the fall.

Here's another Biblical reason why the fossils we find could not have been buried before God created Adam:

When we examine fossils, in some of them we see evidence of sickness, disease and cancer. There is evidence of violence and of one animal eating another. So there were some problems. Not everything was good.

Yet, at the end of day six of creation: "God saw all that He made and behold. It was very good." (Genesis 1:31 NASB)

God didn't call His creation just good. He called it very good. A world with sickness, disease, cancer and violence is not good. So, the fossilized bones we now find had to have come from animals that died after God created Adam, and after the fall.

• The Days of Creation
• Millions of Years vs. 6,000 Years
• Dinosaurs and People Living Together
• Dinosaurs in the Bible



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