About 20 years ago in an Oklahoma Baptist Church, I listened to a high school science teacher share the importance of being able to explain how science and the Bible fit together. After his presentation, I started reading and studying more. Ken Ham, the president and CEO of answers in Genesis, seemed to have the best resources in this area, and much of my reading has been works by Ham.

Most of the information included in this blog entry will be taken from The New Answers Book . over 25 questions on Creation/Evolution and the Bible. This book is one that I have shared with my grown children and other friends that have asked how to teach their children about questions they have about the Bible and what the science teachers say about creation and the age of the Earth.

For the first 18 centuries of church history the almost universal belief of Christians was that God created the world in six literal days roughly 4,000 years before Christ and destroyed the world with a global Flood at the time of Noah. But about 200 years ago some scientists developed new theories of earth history, which proposed that the earth and universe are millions of years old. Hence, Christian leaders have made various attempts to fit the millions of years into the Bible. A growing number of Christians (now called young-earth creationists), including many scientists, hold to the traditional view, believing it to be the only view that is truly faithful to Scripture.

God's Word must be the final authority on all matters about which it speaks--not just the moral and spiritual matters, but also its teachings that bear on history, archaeology, and science. What is at stake here is the authority of Scripture, the character of God, the doctrine of death, and the very foundation of the gospel. If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of the Bible is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality.

DURATION OF THE CREATION

In Martin Luther's day, some of the church fathers were saying that God created everything in only one day or in an instant. Martin Luther wrote,

When Moses writes that God created Heaven and Earth and whatever is in them in six days, then
let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment accord-
ing to which six days were one day. But, if you cannot understand how this cold have been done
in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor ob being more learned than you are. (Deut. 29:29)

For you are to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God Himself says what is written. But since God is speaking, it is not fitting for you wantonly to turn His Word in the direction you with to go.

Similarly, John Calvin stated, "Albeit the duration of the world, now declining to its ultimate end, has not yet attained six thousand years....God's work was completed not in a moment but in six days."

Exodus 31:12 says that God commanded Moses to say to the children of Israel:
Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord.
Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel
shall keep the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever be-
tween me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed (Exodus 31: 15-17).
John records the words of Christ in Chapter 5: 46-47
"For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. but if you do not believe
his writings, how will you believe my words?"

DINOSAURS

Dinosaurs are used more than almost anything else to indoctrinate children and adults in the idea of millions of years of earth history. However, the Bible gives us a framework for explaining dinosaurs in terms of thousands of years of history, including the mystery of when they lived and what happened to them. According to the Bible, dinosaurs were created along with other land animals, on Day 6 of the Creation Week.
Genesis 1: 24-25

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds-- livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and
everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Some say that if man and dinosaurs existed together, they would be mentioned in the Bible. One reason why the word dinosaur isn't in the Bible is because the King James Version was translated in 1611 and the word "dinosaur" was invented until 1841. Could the word "dragon" have meant the same as dinosaur? There are Bible passages about dragons that lived in the sea: "the dragons in the waters" (Psalm 74:13), "and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea" (Isaiah 27:1). Though the word "dinosaur" strictly refers to animals that lived on the land, the sea reptiles and flying reptiles are often grouped with the dinosaurs. Job 41 describes a great animal that lived in the sea, Leviathan, that even breathed fire. There is also mention of a flying serpent in the Bible: the "fiery flying serpent" ( Isaiah 30:6). Not long after the Flood, God was showing a man called Job how great He was as Creator, by reminding Job of the largest land animal He had made:

Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox. See now, his
strength is in his hips, and his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thights are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron.  He is the first of the ways of God; only He who made him can bring near His sword(Job 40:15-19)
The phrase 'fist of the ways of God" suggests this was the largest land animal god had made. The "cedar" of that time and place was commonly 40 feet tall. Some commentaries say that this animal was an elephant or a hippopotamus. They hardly have tails as such. No living creature comes close to this description. However, behemoth is very much like Brachiosaurus, one of the large dinosaurs.

GEOLOGY

Not much is written in the Bible about geology. Geologists state that the earth must have been formed over millions of years. Even the continents that would have appeared to have once been connected, must have take millions of years to separate. However, it is suggested that the continents were once joined together in Genesis 1: 9-10, and are now apart. The only possibility is continental division and "sprint" during the Flood. In between Genesis 7:11 and 8:2, current and new scientific discoveries might suggest that the earth did a lot of changing in a small amount of time. Our Grand Canyon is often used by geologists to prove that the earth is really old. A you-tube video explains this better that I could ever try to say or event copy from a book. This video can be found by searching you-tube for "Origins- Mount St. Helens- Explosive Evidence for Creation with Dr. Steve Austin." During and after this great explosion, many questions were answered about the time required for formation of canyons and how layers of strata can be laid down in a short amount of time.

Additional work is now being done to further explain just what happened during the Flood. Future discoveries may require adjustments to thinking and understanding, but such is the nature of the human scientific enterprise. In contrast, "the work of the Lord endures forever" ( 1 Peter 1: 25).

Hopefully, what I have put in this blog with make you curious enough to check out these scriptures and the video. Again, the book The New Answers Book, by Ken Ham would be a very good resource to help a Christian defend the Word of God and how the Bible can exist with science.