Excellent post dedication, however with one line ". To me, those teachers who try to extent earth's time to 10,000 or even 21,000 is to soften students up and open the door to theistic evolution." we have to remember that is was done by our most conservative scholars trying to implement the conservativism of Elder Pierson and what evolved into the Adventist Theological Society. Elder Pierson wanted a church that was just getting members by way of very short evangelistic meetings and wanting to purge all "liberalism" in any way, shape or form from the church. He believed that the SDABC was too full of liberal ideas. That Bible study should consist of things such as Uriah Smith, Stephen Haskell's Bible Handbook and to take what ever Mrs. White said about the text as the last word on the subject. If Pierson and those around him are too liberal with their "we really need to be able to go back to 10,000 or even 21,000 to fit the 'about' 6,000" then who is conservative enough to trust?

Kevin,
What troubles me is your reports of what is being taught in our universities. I know when I sent my own daughter to our Adventist college she was taught theistic evolution as fact and made fun of right in class for believing God created the earth in six days. She would phone me in the evenings, in tears and confusion.
Yes, undermining the inspired account of origins was taking place in several of our collages and there was quite an uproar, as parents and students raised the issue and several "conferences" back in 2002- 2004 were held to try to settle things down. Though there was much talk and many papers written, I'm not sure the actual problem in the educational system was ever really addressed. To me it was a lot of double talk. A "yes we believe in creation BUT... not enough to really teach it as anything other than a faith option."
Are our universities really teaching our young people to doubt scripture, to push away EGW writings, to elevate human higher critical scholarship above the bible and EGW and follow the compromises of the world?

Now this referencing to past president of the Adventist World Church, Robert Pierson, as wanting to get rid of the "about 6000" and moving to accept some 21,000 year age for the earth just does NOT sound right.

At this point I think something was twisted from whatever he said, and used by the liberal scholars to support their move into "higher critical" Bible interpretation. I can't help but believe his words are twisted and presented to do the exact opposite of what Elder Pierson was saying.

I read his last message as president of the world church: Given at the Annual Council 1978



Don't let it happen!!!
Those were his words.

But sadly it is happening.

And again, I think there is confusion with the age of the earth and the age of creation. When Ellen White talks about this earth being about 6000 years old, I have agreed and said similar things. However, is there something in her writings that indicate she intends to be talking about terra firma, the earth as the third rock from the sun rather than life on earth? The Bible was written for us for our time frame. I believe Ellen White is of the same mindset. Consider those who say the genealogy of the Bible indicates the earth is about 6000-10000 years old. They can only mean referring to life.

When you talk about earth, that implies earth as from when the Bible says, in the beginning. In the beginning of our timeframe. Not eons past of what God and the angels did or didn't do, or the worlds made or not made. We just don't know what happened in the past. That is not of our concern. All we have, is in the beginning, of our time frame. So when I say, and I've been trying to limit such saying, the earth is about 6000 years old, I mean exactly referring to life on the earth is about 6000 years old. Nothing more. The earth itself is older. The Bible says so. How much older, it doesn't say. So when people talk about rocks and halos and etc., creationists don't really have much to talk about here. As creationists are talking about life on the earth. Yes, they do talk about creation of other worlds, the universe, but "creationists" usually refers to creation of life on our planet.

Fully agree Kland,

It's obvious we do NOT know what happened in the eternity before God created this earth and what this "war in heaven" all entailed, or why the earth was dark, without form and void before the six day creation began.
It has been speculated that Lucifer was so jealous that God would not allow him into the inner council to help plan creation, Lucifer went into full rebellion initiating the war in heaven and during that war, he and his angels destroyed things, including whatever this earth, prepared for creation, was like before that war. leaving the earth void and without form.
Thus yes, the Bible does not deny the rocks and material of the planet were here before the six days of creation, but it was all without form and void. The age of that material we are not told.
That may also explain why there is an asteroid belt circulating the sun between Jupiter and Mars.
Was there once an uninhabited planet there that was destroyed in that war? Speculation of course.
Again, it's obvious we do NOT know what happened in the eternity before God created this earth and what this "war in heaven" all entailed.
But even then we know death is the result of sin. And God would never allow Satan to destroy a world with sinless inhabitants.


However, the issue that threatens trust in the reliability in what we DO know of the Biblical account, and false theories that threatens the gospel message concerning the whole sin and salvation issue as presented in the Bible is an important responsibility.

That concerns how people understand and teach what happened when God created life and form on this planet.

1. Did He create in six days as Genesis indicates? Perfect life forms fully developed?

2. Is the chronology of life on earth, basically correct as given in scripture, taking about 6000 years, or are their a few 1000's of years of evolution in between for which no Biblical records are given?

3. Is E.G.White lying when, even after given so called "scientific reasons" she did not change, but she continued to say the earth is about 6000 years old. Not just once, not just in vague references, but 25 times, plus another 16 times stating about 4000 years elapsed between Creation and Christ's life on earth.

4. Why do we take the studies of those who studious deny the biblical cataclysm world wide flood?
That flood can scientifically explain a lot of things that obviously happened after the earth was created, but with the denial of the flood are thrown into speculations that they took multi-thousands(millions) of years to develop, but which could fairly easily be explained as fitting into the "about 6000 years" time when the magnitude and power released during the flood is understood.

5. Even when creationists concede that rocks were probably already present in an earth without form and void before the six day creation, the evolutionist still persist in their evolutionary theory. Why?

According to Hebrew scholars, the genealogies that we use in trying to figure out the age of the world show that they are authentic by being some of the most difficult to translate. Languages are dynamic, and these passages show evidence of having tried to keep up with the dynamics of change.

In the first century there were three textual families. There was the Palestinian family: Most complete and well known are the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was the Bible used in Judah/Israel around these centuries. Then there was the Egyptian family: Most complete and well known is the Septuagint . This was how the Bible was preserved by those who went to Egypt as Babylon was coming, and used by the dispersion into western Asia and Europe. And there was the Babylonian family. for those who stayed in Babylon.

From what has been pieced together, the books with the names of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel etc. to Malachi are almost identical. Fundamentalists like to point to this near identicality. The few differences are usually easily identified, such as spelling errors, copying errors and scribal notes that got mixed into the text. However, (and please forgive me for forgetting the exact passage) but there is a passage in the dead sea's Isaiah which sounds much more like Matthew 5-7 than our translations of Isaiah, and we now know that Jesus' sermon on the mount was based on this Palestinian version of the Isaiah text that we don't have.

While these books are nearly identical, there are less identicalities between the rest of the Bible books. Nothing theologically major. But the parts with the most dissimilarities are in the translations of the ages of the patriarchs. Tradition has tended to look at the shortest possible ages to give, but apparently all three textual families can be translated with conclusions around ten to twelve or so thousands. But the popular minimum ages: The Palestinian texts would come out to 9,000 today. Thus, it would have come out to about 7,000 years in Jesus' day. Rabbis from a little before Jesus day calculated this and formed the "Cosmic Week" theory, saying that the 7,000th year would be the age of the Messiah. They expected the 7,000th year to start in the year what we now understand as the year 31 AD. While in the apostolic writings we don't find this as an argument for Jesus, among Jews that rejected Jesus did not like how this fit. Using the same method for the Egyptian family, they had the world as 5,000 years old then. (Maybe one reason for the Apostolic writings for not using the cosmic week is that Paul and the churches in the west used the Egyptian family of texts). But using this same method on the Babylonian family, one possible translation would be that the world was only 4,000 years old when Jesus was here, and thus the Babylonian text was embraced as it placed the 7.000th year the farthest into the future. It if from this Babylonian textual family that the Masoretic text came from.

So which Bible is the REAL Bible? The Bible Jesus used (the Palestinian family) where the year AD 31 starts the 7.000 year and today it is about 9,000 years since creation? the Bible Paul used,(the Egyptian family) which has Jesus coming around 5,000 years after creation, and thus the world now about 7,000 years old? Or the Bible we use (the Babylon family) which has Jesus coming around 4,000 years after creation and is now about 6,000 years old?

And again, these are only possible ways to interpret these numbers, with other possible readings do go back to 10,000 years and more. And these ages insists that we impost upon the text that the Bible's genealogies not what was done with other ancient genealogies but the methods of classical Greece.

All of these are based on the Bible's genealogies to be basically correct and not thousands of years of evolution that the Bible does not include, but being realistic about the difficulties in the reading and translation of the ancient texts. We want to be as fair as we can to the Biblical text, and that includes being honest about these points.
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