Is there any evidence for young earth creationism?

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.]

The evident immediateness of the first day's work applies throughout the other days. Whatever grounds there may be for scientific men to infer processes occupying vast tracts of time before the "days," there is no real reason to doubt, but plain and positive scripture to believe, that the work done on the several six days was not of long ages, but really within the compass of the literal evening and morning. How unnatural to suppose an age for light to act on the first day! And why suppose otherwise on the second day or any other? A long succession of ages may be true after "the beginning" and before "the days," which taken in their natural import have a striking moral harmony with man, the last work of God's creation-week.

When that moment comes, Scripture speaks of days, — "and the evening and the morning were the first day." I believe these days were days of twenty-four hours. How simple and perfect is God's tale of creation! He first of all created, in the beginning, the heavens and the earth; and secondly, at a date which we can measure, reformed and fashioned the earth, and then put man on it. He did not create the world in six days, nor does Scripture say so. Careless readers have done that. A joiner might fashion a table, but he could not create the material. The creation of the wood and the making of the table are totally different things.

Let me repeat, then, that there is room, for all that geology wants, between verses 1 and 2, and then we can take the six days to be, as I believe them to be, days of twenty-four hours, in which God prepared the earth for man. It might have taken one hundred years for an oak tree to grow, but it would not take a carpenter one day to cut that tree, and make it into some useful article. That is what is meant, I take it, when it is said of the earth, that God "formed it to be inhabited." He put to His hand, and formed the earth for man, and then "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). Then we read, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made" (Gen. 2:2-3).

Further, Principal Griffith-Jones says that geology has superseded the Mosaic programme of the creation of the world in six days. But the Bible never says it took six days to create the world. The creation of the world is stated in Genesis 1:1. There may have been millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the chapter, and geologists are welcome to all the time they demand for the formation of the rocks in their present order. The six days, whether literal days or long periods of time, were periods of re-construction.

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.

We therefore accept the days as being days of twenty-four hours. To faith this is no more difficult of acceptance than the interpretation which sees in them thousands of years.

This surely points to the diurnal movement of the earth revolving round the sun. This clearly means a day of twenty-four hours. To try to make out that “the evening and the morning” were vast stretches of time involves too many difficulties. One cannot fit into the narrative the idea of millions of years of night, followed by millions of years of day. The reason why the period theory is pressed, is we believe that scientists are unwilling to admit the power of God. They will not allow that He is the Sustainer and Controller, as well as the Creator of nature.

If the preceding exposition be just, the day of the first week is plainly one of twenty-four hours. No one can fairly deny that scripture, like other speech, uses "day" where required in a general or figurative sense, which may cover a period of considerable length. But this need never produce embarrassment to a careful reader: as ever, the context gives the clue. In this chapter and the next we have the word variously applied according to the exigency of the case; in none ought it to be doubtful. Here "the evening" and "the morning" should exclude just question. It can only mean, thus defined, a day of twenty-four hours. Before (not "there was a sun," but before) the sun was set to rule the day (of twelve hours) as now makes no difference as to the length meant. The same phrase is carefully used before and after. Nor would any prolonged sense have been tolerated for this carefully specified week but for the error which muddles "the beginning" with the first and following days, makes the heavens and the earth at first to be a chaos, and in so doing effaces in fact the creation of both the one and the other. For where is either really "created" on such a scheme?

This will appear still more convincingly when we come to close quarters with the six days viewed as embracing the immense ages of geology. It might not be so glaring when taken in a dreamy poetic way as a vision in the hands of the late Hugh Miller. But when the simple dignity of the true father of history is vindicated for the matchless prose of Moses, the effort to make the days, or some of them, answer to the ages of geologic formation in building up the crust of the globe proves itself in so much more glaring and violent failure. Take the first day as our first test: are we told to imagine such a notion as that the outshining of the light in dispelling the immediately antecedent darkness occupied an age? And if not for the first day, or the second, or the fourth, how harshly inconsistent to claim it for the third, fifth, and sixth? Especially as the seventh day, or sabbath, should honestly put to the rout any such application. In every case the figurative sense is here irrelevant and unsuitable. We shall see in due time from scripture that the stretching out of the sabbath into an aeon is altogether unfounded.

Archbishop Ussher, using the record in the Bible of the ages of the patriarchs and its subsequent history, has made a chronology, which fixes the creation of man at about 4004 B.C. But this chronology was not inspired. Ussher generally treated each son in the genealogy as the eldest, whereas this was not necessarily the case, as witness Seth, who was Adam’s third son, and Solomon, who was far from being David’s eldest son. It is thus possible that Ussher’s chronology is within the mark.