Adam was created in 3975 B.C.-- according to Frank Klassen in his book A Chronology of the Bible. If you add in the 1,997 years since the birth of Christ, you have a total of 5,972 years. Yet-- your child's science books talk about the age of the earth in millions and even billions of years. One way to resolve this kind of controversy is to say the science books and science teachers are wrong. Of course, many educators and scientists respond by saying that the Biblical account of creation is wrong.

Before going any further, we need to establish one important fact and that is this: The Bible has never been in proven conflict with scientific fact. Of course there are many occasions when the Bible is in conflict with so-called scientific theories-- but never in proven conflict with scientific fact. Actually-- many archaeological discoveries and scientific accomplishments have reinforced what the Bible has said from day one.

Time seems to be the major problem when we start to compare what the Bible teaches with what the science books teach. Biblical history is pretty clear in tracing the record of the human race on earth for not more than about six thousand years back in time. However, 6,000 years does not provide enough time for the existence of dinosaurs and the formation of such things as coal, diamonds, and oil. Carbon dating is used in an effort to determine the approximate age of fossils but many scientists are not sure that carbon dating is all that accurate. Still-- the history of life on the earth goes back much more than a mere 6,000 years. The fossilized remains of prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs is one example of this kind of evidence.

We need answers to this controversy and so do our children. The first answer is very simple and also very profound. No matter how long it took or how it was done, GOD DID IT! God is the sole creative force in the entire universe and everything exists as a result of His design and His power.

Some scientists are beginning to come around to the position of a supernatural creative force and the concept of spontaneous generation seems to be less popular then it was twenty years ago. For one thing, there is just no way to explain the existence of life, even in its lowest forms, except to give Almighty God the credit. Only He can make something out of nothing.

The basic question we're exploring is this: if the Bible indicates that human life on earth is about 6,000 years old, and-- if scientific fact proves that the earth and prehistoric life on the earth go back millions of years, what should we believe? The first answer is-- God did it. The second answer is-- God is timeless and lives in the eternal present. God lives in the eternal present where there is no past or future. In Exodus 3:14, God describes Himself to Moses as the I AM! Not the I WAS-- or the I WILL BE-- but the I AM! The millions and even billions of years we're talking about here don't even exist for God.

The next answer deals with the length of God's days of creation. The Genesis account of creation clearly talks about six creative days. To us, a day is 24 hours, the amount of time it takes the earth to rotate once on its axis in relationship to the sun. But-- God's days in Genesis may NOT have been 24 hours long. Let's look at what the Bible says about the fourth day of creation, and this is recorded in Genesis one, verse 14: "And God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years." This verse indicates that the sun and the moon, our means of measuring time, weren't created until the fourth creative day. How long were the first three creative days? They could have been a zillion years each, since God is timeless and we humans weren't even created yet.

The next part of our answer deals with the point in the history of the earth where humans first enter the picture. It's nice to be first and we naturally assume that no one ever existed on the earth before us. But-- that may not be true. The first verse in the Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The second verse, though, is a shocker. This new creation of God is described as being without form and totally empty of anything meaningful. In the Living Bible, Kenneth Taylor describes the earth at this point as a "shapeless, chaotic mass". The same description could be used for scrambled eggs. What happened between verse one and verse two?

We do know that God is willing to exercise His authority as the creator and destroy what He has made. The story of the great flood in Genesis chapter 6 is proof of this. Therefore, He may have wiped out certain life forms of an earlier creation and started all over again in verse two of Genesis chapter one. One Biblical theory about this kind of massive destruction relates to the war in heaven which is described in Revelation chapter 12. Verses 7-10 are thought to describe a past event rather than a future event. Let me read them for you: "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and

the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down-- that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him." The fall of Satan and his angels-- who are what we know as demons today-- may have caused a cataclysmic catastrophe which destroyed life on earth at that time.