I’ve been preaching on some difficult and contentious issues the past couple of Sundays. I thought it might be helpful to present this in writing so you can see what I believe.
First, I believe God created the heavens and the earth in six days. This seems simple enough, but I believe they were six days to Him – we weren’t there yet (Job 40). In our time reckoning, this may have been 14 billion years, but for him it was six days. Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” (Peter reiterates this in 2 Peter 3:8). We are limiting God’s power and awesomeness when we fail to realize that He is timeless and, in fact, lives outside of time. The Bible teaches, by the way, that God is still resting in his seventh day (Hebrews 4:1-7).
So, when an astrophysicist says that it took billions of years for the universe to reach the size it is, I believe that. (The universe has to be the size and age it is for life to exist on earth). When geologists say the rocks and strata are millions of years old, I believe that too. When a paleontologist says a dinosaur’s bones are 65 million years old, I say, “Wow! Look how creative God is!” (God used the bodies of ancient plants and animals to create oil, gas and coal which we now use to spread the gospel. He probably destroyed those ancient creatures before He created us because he knew the world isn’t big enough for me and tyrannosauruses to walk around at the same time.)
I believe God created the whole universe by fiat miracle. He is supernatural and spoke it into existence out of nothing – ex nihilo. But he uses the elements that He created to fashion cells and organisms, and to create rocks, dirt, water and the atmosphere.
I do not believe the universe is a happy accident. I believe we were supernaturally created by the God of the Bible. I believe, in fact, that Jesus himself was the creator of all things. John 1, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1 attest to this.
Further, I believe that the Bible is God’s infallible, perfect Word. Written to show us how to find and trust Him.
Here is where it gets really interesting and more difficult: Genesis 1 states that the earth had three evenings and mornings before the sun and moon were created. This is impossible, right? This is where science and faith diverge. This is where we find out that having faith in God means we can’t always understand what is right before our eyes. When I first began to study this, it upset me. I thought, didn’t Moses realize what he was writing? Didn’t he see the issue here?
But I now believe he knew exactly what he was writing – and that God inspired him to do so. I believe God is showing us that this is a book of miracles, not science.
Creation is just the first of many miracles in this book. It will have animals on an ark, a man swallowed by a great fish, impossible victories, people coming back to life, a virgin birth, a man walking on the water, calming storms, feeding multitudes with a small lunch, restoring sight, and even rising from the dead himself. None of this is possible scientifically. But with God, nothing is impossible. He can fix the unfixable, heal the terminal, move the unmovable, and love the unlovable. God is asking us to believe the unbelievable because everything, it turns out, is a miracle.
We must hold two truths in tension: that the heavens declare the glory of God, and that God is supernatural, so miracles will defy the natural from time to time.
As I stated, I believe the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19). When we study the earth and the cosmos, we can be assured that what we are observing is, in fact, true. Light really does take millions of years to travel from distant stars. Plate tectonic activity really does take a long time to push mountains and continents around. Predators really were designed to hunt and eat other animals, and always have been. Death came to man, not animals, through sin.
God wants us to study, explore, and observe. God wants us to see how awesome He is. The immense size of the universe is a reminder to us how long eternity is. And God can and will break his own natural laws if he chooses.
Life is a miracle. We’ll never fully understand the mysteries of creation. But we can trust that God is the creator, and he wants us to love and trust Him.
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