How does young earth creationism handle the evidence for millions of years in the fossil record?

There is another passage, which still further confirms the above. We read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds [aiōn] were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). Here reference is clearly made to God’s initial act of creation. But why should the word, ages, be employed when creation has to do with material things? The expression, ages, is clearly a reference made to time. But how did time begin? How can we, how do we, measure time? The answer is, Only by the fact of the creation of the earth, the sun, the moon and their movements. The revolving of the earth gives us day and night; its orbit round the sun gives us our year. The movement of the moon round the earth gives us a lunar month. “God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also” (Gen. 1:16). Creation was necessary to carve out of eternity, the little span, we call time, regulated by the movements of the heavenly bodies and this earth. So we read, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen. 1:14). Time will not cease to be till heaven and earth cease to be. We can understand somewhat why the translators used the word, world, where it should have been the word, ages; this latter clearly giving a better understanding of this remarkable passage of Scripture.

We are often told that millions and billions of years must have elapsed during the formation of the earth's crust, to say nothing of what happened before. There is ample room for all this between the first and second verses; ages and ages ran out. The second verse brings us to an important point in time, when the work of forming the present state of things upon the earth's surface began.

But geologists call for millions of years for the formation of the rocks. Supposing they are right in this, there is no difficulty. Scripture allows all the time that is necessary for the mighty changes that have taken place in the crust of the earth.

Let me here state another patent fact. It is after all this that the days come in. It is quite a mistake to count them long periods. They are nothing of the sort. I see no reason to doubt that they are simple cycles of twenty-four hours. If long periods had been meant, do you think that God would have spoken about "the evening and the morning"? Such a phrase would be an extraordinary formula for introducing any other than a natural day. That there were long periods may be quite true; but then they are left room for, and not described. They would come in before if not after the state described in verse 2 — once certainly, and perhaps twice. There might be suites of long periods for aught we know. It does not appear, as far as my reading goes, that there is anything of real trustworthiness as to these periods except the general fact, which is a matter of fair inference from what has been turned up here below. But here it is, and here only, in my opinion, that you must insert these long eras. Grant that there may have been forty thousand years for one period, what is there to alarm in that? Be it so: I care not how many millions of years you claim. Supposing that scheme true, there is room for the geologic ages; Scripture says nothing to the contrary, but leaves abundant space for all, and so much the more remarkably because at first sight such interstices might be easily passed over.

It is not the part of wisdom for a Christian to deny facts. Why reject the phenomena which indicate states not only of the earth, but of living creatures there before Adam was made, that is, before the six days? Otherwise, how can we escape the supposition, that God was pleased to make vast quantities of fossilized objects, giving the appearance of having lived on the earth, which never did? Are you prepared to accept the notion that God studiously gave a semblance of that which was not true? There are remains of animals, and animals too that were evidently made with distinct objects and with characteristics altogether different from those of any animals to be found now, and supposing a correspondent state of things (as for instance, when the world was a vast marsh and enormous heat prevailed). There is no ground whatever to doubt these facts. I do not see that a Christian shows his wisdom, or his faith either, by denying anything of the sort. Granted that being unrevealed it is not a point for faith; it is a thing that man must ascertain and prove if he can, and thus it is a question of knowledge or ignorance. One cannot talk correctly about faith in science. Faith has nothing to do with science, nor again has science with faith. What the scientific men have to do is to collect and marshal their facts; then let them and others judge their conclusions. This does not appear to me at all arrogant — but what every soul who can ought to do — every one who takes the trouble of making himself master of the facts they present. It does not follow that the most diligent and successful collectors of facts are the best deducers from them. This may or may not be. A wise man has not a word to say against science itself or known facts. I do complain of the precipitancy and evident animus with which many men have chosen to use what they could in an unformed and crude state of science to contradict the word of God. Neither wisdom nor reverence appears in such ways.

Of course, Genesis 1 sets no claim for the age of the world. It may be many millions of years ago since the earth was created, so far as the Scripture narrative is concerned. Set these two Scriptures side by side and the truth of what we say will be evident. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth Was WITHOUT FORM (Hebrew tohu a ruin, vacancy)” (Gen. 1:1-2).

I accept what is now pretty well known by the student of the word, that in the term which opens the book of Genesis — “In the beginning,” as well as in the next clause of the verse, God has left it open for the possibility of millions of years to have elapsed since that “beginning” was, when God created the heavens and the earth; and thus time sufficient was allowed, to form the strata of the earth, as it is now found, before the work of the six days was accomplished, in the varied ages which had passed, and through the many catastrophes which had probably taken place. For we read in the next clause of the verse, that the earth (not the heavens), was without form and waste (tohu), having probably fallen into chaos. God had not created it in this state, as Isaiah testifies (Isa. 45:18). “He created it not waste” — the same Hebrew word as used in Gen. 1.

We are aware that there are traces of death to be found in the fossils and petrifactions of extinct animals, of species now unknown, in the strata formed by the ages gone by. This is admitted most fully; but it does not interfere with our present question in any wise.

For many years it has been appreciated by many Christians that the geological record is very largely one of the cataclysmic global flood as described in Genesis and referred to elsewhere in the Scriptures e.g. 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 2 Peter 3:3-6. (Men do not oppose long ages or a pre-creation view as such, they oppose any idea of 'God' and of 'judgment' as in Noah's flood.) Clearly such a flood would have left the remains of all types of life sorted by type in sediments soon hardened into rock. The earth in Genesis 1:1 was 'unformed and unfilled' — it is not necessary to understand it as 'wrecked'. These pre-creation ideas introduce even greater theological difficulties such as death before sin, and death operating where God had stated that all that He had made was very good. The fact that fossil creatures are either identical to modern creatures, including apes and men, or of a similar nature, point to the first creation pre-flood scene. It should also be mentioned that a long ages world view introduces more scientific difficulties than it seeks to solve, e.g. features of the universe which could not be as we now see them if there had been the long ages which are mooted. This is not the place to expand on this, but there is much literature available on the subject, both scriptural and scientific. Ed. STEM.]

There might have been millions and millions of years between those two verses. In Genesis 1:1-2, I suppose geological times all came in there. Philosophers, who have examined the matter most accurately, have made twenty-six or twenty-seven catastrophes occur, and give the difference by the strata containing various shells and other fossils. But all that, if so, would come between those two verses, there is plenty of room for it all. For my part I do not believe nine-tenths of what they say about time. For instance, one of the greatest infidels in London made borings in the Nile and brought up a piece of burnt brick, from a depth of twenty-eight feet, proving that man's hand had formed the brick, and by this he made out that so many thousands of years had elapsed since it was deposited, long before the time of Adam. But there were no burnt bricks in Egypt till the time of the Romans, and when told so of course he had not a word to say. And you constantly find such things.

Geologists pretend that a given sandbank must have taken so many thousand years to form, and so on. Without believing them, one can let them take any length of time they like; and still the word of God is sufficient for the believer. There is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and then, all that scene of them being there left out, this earth is without form and void.

The antiquity of the earth may be as great as the shifting schemes of the most enthusiastic geologist ever conceived: there is absolutely neither here nor in any other part of scripture the least intimation that opposes vast ages before man was created, or that affirms man to be nearly contemporary with the original creation. It is ignorance of scripture to say that Moses assigns an epoch to the earth's first formation, such as fathers or commentators (not without worthier remarks) have imagined and made current in Christendom. The philosophers who have spent their time in the study of geology and kindred sciences will act wisely in reading with unwonted care the beginning of Gen. 1. They will thence learn that they have been precipitate in the conclusion that the inspired writing is at all committed to the blunders of its interpreters, theological or scientific. However vast the periods they claim, even for the strata nearest the surface, scripture is the sole record which, while revealing God as the Creator of all things, leaves room for all that has been wrought before the Adamic earth. "The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary: there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa. 40:28). While geology waits for its Newton, subjection to scripture meanwhile would be untold gain to its devotees as to all other men.