What is the age of the earth? How old is the earth?

Genesis 1:1 takes us back to the beginning of this creation, "In the beginning God (who was already there) created the heavens and the earth". There are many and various theories as to how things started and what happened next. The date for that beginning has been set by some scientists at fifteen billion years ago but, right or wrong, it seems that when we come to scientific theories as to the age of the earth for quite a while every twenty years their estimate was doubling. So we do not want to give too much credence to what man says. Man guesses (hopefully it is an educated guess) but what God says in His Word is definite and not to be questioned. There we simply read that "In the beginning God created".

So without straining a point we can say there may be millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Geologists claim that the earth is millions of years old, and this the Bible does not contradict. Man and the lower animals, as we know them, are not more than about six thousand years old; but the earth itself may be millions of years old. Probably every shovelful of coals is pre-adamic.

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).

The philosophies, as well as the religions, of antiquity were wholly ignorant of creation. Of God, of the "beginning," they knew nothing. Dreams of evolution were the earliest folly, and, among the Ionic school, Anaximander and Anaximenes followed Thales, each differing, all blind. Anaxagoras let in with mere matter the idea of mind, but no creator. It is useless to name others; even Plato and Aristotle, rivals too, had no real light. They, more or less openly, all held eternal matter at bottom; and though the philosophers boasted, as they still do, of their knowledge and logic, they failed to see that they could not prove it, or even that it is to mere mind unthinkable. To the believer it is the simple yet deep truth, that a beginning was given to everything that exists; if God says it, he perceives that nothing else can be true. For it is impossible to admit an effect without a cause; but reasoning can never rise at best beyond. There must be a First Cause; it can never say, There is. This God alone can and does affirm: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." God brought the whole ordered system into being. The form, nature, and aim, are not here explained: such a detail had no proper place here. That He created all is a primary and momentous truth.

But there is not a word in scripture to warrant the strange and hasty assumption that the universe was brought into being in the six days of Gen. 1:3-31, so often referred to throughout the Bible. Construe the six days as men will, it is out of the power of any on just principles of interpretation to deny that the first day begins with light, and that th e first two verses are marked off in their nature, as well as by their expression, from the work of the six days. Nothing indeed but prepossession can account for the mistake, which the record itself corrects. "In the beginning" has its own proper significance, and is in no way connected with "the days," save as the revealed start of divine creation, and in due time (however probably immense the interval) leading to that measure of time only when the constitution of things was made for Adam, for the race.

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.

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.

At the top of some editions of the Bible there is marked the date 4004 B.C., that is nearly 6,000 years ago. But that calculation is put there by the hand of fallible man. It probably is fairly correct in dating the creation of Adam. Indeed Archbishop Ussher’s date must have had Adam’s creation in mind, for who can tell when the original creation was?

To suppose that man existed before Adam would clearly be to deny Scripture. He is "the first man" (1 Cor. 15:45). As to six thousand years; we speak of ourselves being separated from Adam by about that time, accepting Usher's chronology as usually printed in our authorized English Bibles. There is, however, no certainty about that. It is a question of calculations made from the ages of the patriarchs and other historical data. Many have done it and no two agree. A few make it a little less than Usher and some a great deal more. Here, again, touching a matter of no real moment, the Bible is largely silent. We may make our calculations, but the fact is — we do not KNOW.

Be that as it may, the one thing that seems certain is that we cannot arrive at absolute certainty as to these matters, hence it would seem to be rather a waste of time to give much thought as to them. It is quite possible that when the Apostle Paul warned Timothy about "endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith," he had in mind such things as these. Had the exact number of years been of importance from a spiritual standpoint, it would have been made quite clear to us in the Scriptures.

"In the beginning," then, "God created the heaven and the earth." Observe the careful abstinence here from measures of time that belong to man. It is now well known, that not the heavens only but the earth had an existence and suited condition when man was not upon it — when it might be utterly impossible, according to the facts that we know about its circumstances, for man to be there, or for any animated nature to subsist — followed by vast and gradual changes, as well as sudden convulsions destructive of such living things as did afterwards exist. For such crises and changes there were, if there be anything ascertained in the "uncertain science," as one called it who was himself one of the chief contributors to the riches of physical knowledge. And an uncertain science it truly is. Humboldt, we may be sure, did not mean to slight any real fruit of man's mind. If there be, then, anything certain in the uncertain science of geology, it is this, that there were immense tracts of duration when man did not exist upon the earth. God's word leaves ample space for them. "In the beginning" fixes the commencement of the universe indeed, but admits of eras of indefinite extent, and this before the confusion described in the following verse, still more of course before the six days, whose course begins with verse 3.

The first and in extent the greatest of all miracles is revealed. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is no specific date given. It is expressly indefinite. Many have confounded ver. 3 with ver. 1, with feelings some hostile, others friendly, to revelation. Both were inexcusably wrong, because both carelessly overlooked the scripture before their eyes. For these words of God, even were there no others confirmatory, affirm in ver. 1 the original creation of the universe, then in ver. 2 its chaotic condition. The earth was not created empty and waste when first called into being (Isa. 45:18). It may have become so often, if able geologists are to be heeded. It certainly was so immediately before the days of man's world began, which commenced, not with creating light, but with its activity renewed after ruin and darkness. "And God said, Light be, and light was."

"In the beginning" is not a known fixed point of time, but indefinite according to the subject-matter; it here intimates that "Of old," or "In former duration" (expressly undefined), God created the universe. Undoubtedly there is no disclosure of the immense aeons of which geologists speak so freely; but the language of ver. 1 leaves the door open for all that can be proved by research, or even for the longest demand of the most extravagant Uniformitarian.

But the words do affirm a "beginning" of the universe, and by God's word, as in both O. and N.T. (see Ps. 33:6-9, and Heb. 11:3). This was everything to accomplish His design, and His design was to create the heavens and the earth, where there had been nothing. Whatever Atheists or Pantheists feign, science at length confesses there was a "beginning;" so that "created" stands here in its proper and fullest sense, as the context requires.