Al On Creation

A friend of mine referred me to a talk given by Al Mohler on the Creation week and the age of the universe. If you have time, it's a really solid presentation and provides great insight into the apparent contradiction between the Biblical account of a recent creation and a seemingly ancient universe.

I was pleased to hear, towards the tail end of the session, two answers given by Mohler as to why the universe appears so old, and that these answers were actually conclusions I had come to already! And there the similarity between my intellectual prowess and Mohler's comes to a halt. But I digress.

The first point Al made was that "the universe appears old because the Creator made it whole." (emphasis mine) Adam was not created as a fetus or fertilized egg. When the first man was formed, he was mature and complete - fully grown, complete with an apparent age. Similarly, all the plants and trees in Eden were created fully grown, not as seeds, though they obviously contained seeds that they might produce after their kind. And thus goes the rest of the universe: created mature, with "age", and whole.

The second reason brought up by Mohler as to why the universe appears old is that it simply "bears testimony to the effects of sin." We've all known people who have aged long before their time. It's not uncommon to see a man or woman who appears 20 years older than they actually are due to the effects of abusing drugs or alcohol or whatever. Even without those influences, humans age at an accelerated rate from what was originally intended. It makes sense, then, that Creation itself has suffered, has become wizened and even crippled, because of its "bondage to decay." Think how bad you'd look if you'd been scoured by an epic global flood!