Can a christian tell me where it says the earth is 6000 years old?

Question

I mean, I can do a little math (just a little) and even if you use the calculations of the Bible, you come up with more than 6000.

I'm being serious, I've only heard/seen this on R&S.

calculations of the Bible being adding Adam's age to Abraham's age to Moses' age, to Methusla's age, to Solomon's age....we had to do that once when i went to catholic high school

firsty: thank you! the first one with something!

btw: for those of you who don't care :o)
i don't think the earth is merely 6000 years old, but i find it kind of hard to believe its "billions and billions" of years old.
to tell the truth, "it don't really make me none", because i will probably only be here about 40 more years anyway.

Answer 1

This is where it comes from:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm

Answer 2

There is no verse which states that. If there was, a year from now it would be wrong. The date of 6000 years is found by doing the math using people's ages and births through Genesis and other parts of the Bible.

Because dating was done very different in Bible times (based(give a on the reign of kings, etc), The ages of almost everything in the Bible is a "best guess". So no exact date can be determined even by doing the math.

But you will find that if you use the strictest interpretation of dates, that it is around 6000 years.

There are other interpretations of the numbers which allow for longer length on time, including the millions of years that science currently teaching the earth needed to form.

Answer 3

I know where they get it from:
1. The world was made in 6 days.
2. The Bible says a day is as a thousand years for the Lord.

I have to admit, I never heard the 6000 years 'theory' until here in R&S either.

Personally, I do not believe the 6000 years thing. I don't think an exact timeframe can be pinned down by man. God is eternal. Not only no end, but no beginning. I have no problems with it being millions of years, dinosaurs existing, and much of evolution theory. God did not reveal the "how" part of creation in the Bible. Those details are not relevant to our salvation, or He would have explained them in the Bible.

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Answer 4

Just a comment to Fisher-
That's a dangerous position you're putting yourself in- putting so much faith in a man! Check whatever he says against the Bible!
To answer your question- the Bible says nothing about the age of the earth. We can calculate backwards to Adam's creation, but nowhere does it say that Adam was created at the same time as the earth.

Answer 5

This figure is mostly based on the "begats" that are listed in the Old Testament.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/age.html#bible

Basically, you start with the creation story and take the birth of Adam and Eve to be a few days into this. The Bible then lists how old they were when they died, plus the ages of their children, and their children's children, and so on down the line. For example, "When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah ... When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber", etc.

So you keep on adding these ages up until you get the fall of Jerusalem, which other sources claim happened around 587 BCE. Add all this years before this to 587, and add this to 2007, and you get the alleged age of the earth according to a strict Biblical interpretation, which comes out to be about 6,000 years.

People who believe this are "Young-earth Creationists". There are "Old-earth Creationists" too (never mind that there are also people who believe in God but are not "creationists"), but the far majority of creationists are young-earth ones.

>>but i find it kind of hard to believe its "billions and
>>billions" of years old.

4.55 billion is a hard figure to mentally comprehend, but science has been able to independently confirm this in multiple ways:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

However, most other people who believe in God do not believe in a deceitful God who would go out of his way to make the earth look billions of years old.

Answer 6

Biblical sources for age of the earth:
Genesis 5:3 And Adam lived 130 years, and begot Seth
Genesis 5:6 Seth lived 105 years, and begot Enosh
Genesis 5:9 Enosh lived 90 years, and begot Cainan
Genesis 5:12 Cainan lived 70 years, and begot Mahalalel
Genesis 5:15 Mahalalel lived 65 years, and begot Jared
Genesis 5:18 Jared lived 162 years, and begot Enoch
Genesis 5:21 Enoch lived 65 years, and begot Methuselah
Genesis 5:25 Methuselah lived 187 years, and begot Lamech
Genesis 5:28 Lamech lived 182 years, and begot Noah
Genesis 5:32 Noah lived 500 years, and begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth
Genesis 11:10 Shem lived 100 years, and begot Arphaxad 2 years after the Flood

Add all these up and you get 1,654 years from Adam until the Flood + 2 years and Arphaxad was born. We continue in Genesis 11:12 Arphaxad lived 35 years, and begot Shelah
Genesis 11:14 Selah lived 30 years, and begot Eber
Genesis 11:16 Eber lived 34 years, and begot Peleg
Genesis 11: 18 Peleg lived 30 years, and begot Reu
Genesis 11:20 Reu lived 32 years, and begot Serug
Genesis 11:22 Serug lived 30 years, and begot Nahor
Genesis 11:24 Nahor lived 29 years, and begot Terah
Genesis 11:26 Terah lived 70 years, and begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
(Abram's name was later changed by God to Abraham--see Genesis 17:5) So, if you add up these numbers, you get 290 years from the flood to Abraham.
Now, if you skip over to Matthew 1:17, you will see that it was 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from
David to Deportation to Babylon, and 14 generations from Bablylon to Messiah. This is 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus. If we make an ASSUMPTION of 36 years per generation, this places Jesus birth at 1,512 years after Abraham.
So, to summarize, we have 1,654 years from the beginning (Adam) to the Flood, then 290 years to Abraham, then 1,512 years (give or take a week) from Abraham to Jesus. Jesus was born in 4 BC, so from then til now is 2,011 years. This adds up to 5,467 years for the age of the earth; based on an assumption of 36 years per generation. You can rerun the figures with a strict Biblical 40 years per generation, but you don't get millions or billions. Those numbers are reserved for Congress and evolutionists.
It isn't really exact because we are NOT told the length of a generation; but it isn't too far off from 6-8,000 years. To get higher numbers, you're going to have to really STRETCH the definition of a generation.
In His Service,
John the Baptist

Edit: The Hebrew word for "Day" in Genesis is "yome" which is ONLY used in reference to a 24 hour day. The answers to this: http://watchtower.org/e/20020608/article... AND THIS: http://bythebible.page.tl/Creation.htm IS THIS: http://www.christiananswers.net/evangeli...

Source(s):
http://icr.org/ http://www.creationevidence.org/cemframe...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
http://www.christiananswers.net/creation..

Answer 7

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Something happened between verses 1 and 2 in order for the earth to be without form and void. This was God's judgement on Satan's rebellion, when Satan declared he will be like the most High. (Isaiah 14:14)

(Isaiah 45:18 KJV) For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
In contrast to Genesis 1:2, this verse says that the earth was not created in vain and that it was created to be inhabited. Isaiah 45:18 is one of the passages used to conclude there must have been humans on earth before Adam. However the context of Isaiah 45 is the 2nd coming of Christ not the time before Adam was created. The preceding verse speaks of Israel being saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.

(Isaiah 24:1 KJV) Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.
Here we see that the LORD made the earth void, made it empty and wasted it. Here we see Genesis 1:2 terminology to discuss the condition of the earth after the 2nd coming of Christ.

(Jeremiah 4:23 KJV) I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
Or "I looked at the earth and it was just like Genesis 1:2, without form and void." Again, the context is the 2nd coming of Christ. When Christ comes again it will be in judgment. His judgment will destroy the earth. "Without form and void" describes the condition of the earth after judgment, which is God's wrath poured out upon the satanic plan of evil at the 2nd coming of Christ just as it was at the beginning of Satan's rebellion.

Genesis 1:2 uses last day terminology at the beginning; pictures the 2nd coming of the LORD as a man of war when He comes back and ends the battle. The battle that was started is not resolved until the 2nd coming of Christ when He finishes what was started.

God created the earth with the battle in mind.

(Isaiah 46:10 KJV) Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
The Earth is billions of years old,the Human race about 7,000

Answer 8

The Earth is almost 5 billion years old.
I am a Christian.

I have never seen anyone state that the earht is 6000 years old, here or anywhere else. The only time I have ever seen it is when atheists say it to make Christians look dumb.

Answer 9

No where does God's word say this but it does say that mankind is 6000 years old. The world had existed before the creation of mankind (Adam and Eve) and was also destroyed by evil, known as the pre-adamic age when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Answer 10

The bible never says exactly. It does give a genealogy (even though us atheists know it is crap.)

Luke 3:34-38 lists 20 generations between Adam and Abraham: Abraham, Thara, Nachor, Saruch, Ragau, Phalec, Heber, Sala, Cainan, Arphaxad, Sem, Noe, Lamech, Mathusala, Enoch, Jared, Maleleel, Cainan, Enos, Seth, Adam. Then Matthew 1:17 gives 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus: "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."

To go by that though, people weren't having babies until they were 65. Go figure, they can't even get simple math right, how are they going to figure out carbon dating?

Answer 11

I don't believe the earth is 6,000 years old. I teach in a Christian school, and what we teach our students is that recorded human civilization is about 6,000 years old, but that the earth existed long before that. In early history (before watches, calendars, and other methods of calculating time), time was open to very loose interpretation. A day to God (in the Creation story) might have been several million years in earth-time. Science supports that the earth is much older than 6,000 years.