Believers, your understanding on how old is the earth.

by jam 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  undercover

  So, the Creative Days are no longer viewed as being 7000 years long, but as an unspecified “considerable length of time.”

  They've never retracted their previous doctrine of 7,000 year creative days. What they've done, to try to distance themselves from creationists, is to allow for a billions year old earth, while still accepting that all life on it is less than 50,000 years old...

  The scripture in Exodus blows that theory all to hell.

  Their doctrine of a ransom sacrifice is bound up in the belief that Adam was created, and created just 6,000 years ago. They cannot abandon their 7,000 year creative day without screwing up everything else Adam/Jesus related. If Adam wasn't created per Bible chronology, then maybe Adam wasn't created. If he wasn't created, then there was no need for a ransom. No need for a ransom, no need for a perfect man, Jesus to come to earth. The whole thing comes tumbling down.
• 

  ScenicViewer

  @ Undercover who said,

  Day 1 started, not with the actual creation of the earth and other heavenly bodies, but with the creataion of light. In other words JWs believe the earth was already here when the 7 Creative Days began, and those Creative Periods involved preparing the earth for plant, animal, and human life.

  Too bad that doesn't jive with scripture:

  Exodus 20:11

  For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and he proceeded to rest on the seventh day. That is why Jehovah blessed the sabbath day and proceeded to make it sacred.

  That is a good point, and it throws a wrench into the Society's thinking. Here is one more reference from the same Book that says the same thing.

  (Exodus 31:17)
  “Between me and the sons of Israel it is a sign to time indefinite, because in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day he rested and proceeded to refresh himself.”

  And if that isn't bad enough, one of the Watchtower writers even dropped the ball when this was written,

  (W 7-15-76 p427, par5)
  “The Bible indicates that Jehovah created the heavens and the earth in six days, each 7,000 years in length.”

  That remark goes completely against what the Society (usually) teaches, that the heavens and earth can be billions of years old! It's a little flub makes me chuckle.
• 

  snowbird

  In six days, God "made" the heavens and earth ready for ... MAN!

  He "rested" on the seventh day because everything MAN needed was in place.

  "Let the reader use discernment."
• 

  james_woods

  Well, here I guess we should go ahead and put together the uniquely Witness view on the chronology of the 7,000 year days:

  It is the failed Freddy Franz 1975 prophecy.

  This was supposed to be the end of 6,000 years of man's existence on earth. Thus, (and they actually said this in public on the record and printed it) - it would "likely be appropriate" that the 1,000 year long "rule of Christ" would begin in 1975.

  If they were to reject the notion (the sublimely unscientific notion) that mankind's 6000 years on earth did not end in 1975 - then they would practically be on the level of the Ray Franz/Ed Dunlap rejection of the whole stupid 1914 chronology in the first place.

  Which they still refuse to do - even if the idiotic 1975 prophecy was probably their biggest mistake in the last half of the 20th century and gained national attention from the general press as a false prophecy.
• 

  jam

  Thanks folks, you have made it very clear. On one

  hand the wt. say, it could be billions of years old and

  then on the other(as Scenic Viewer revealed) WT. 7-15-16)

  Jehovah made the earth and the HEAVENS in 6 days.

  So Undercover/ and Scenic Viewer, great points, that

  sealed it for me. If the WT and the Bible say, everything

  was created in 6 days, by doggie it must be true.
• 

  lastchance

  the watchtowers chronology only works if it can't be proven that there were civilizations pre 6000 years. Its funny when this topic comes up in witness circles, that most cant see the significance of man being older than 6000 years, to me the whole house of cards falls down.

  can anyone name any civilizations that were to exsist pre adam?
• 

  cofty

  I think they take refuge in the "gap theory"

  In other words there is an unknown time between "in the begining" and the beginning of creation 49 000 years ago.

  Anybody who can accept that humans have only been around for 6000 years can believe anything.
• 

  AGuest

  I don't know if it's limited to JWs, dear Jam (peace to you!): there are a lot of folks out there who believe the physical earth (indeed, the physical universe) was created in seven literal 24-hour days. Unfortunately, that's an error.

  I'm sure someone else has pointed it out here already (although I can't seem to find it) but that there were "seven" creative days, technically OR literally... is an error. Not even the Bible says the earth was created in seven days... whether it is speaking of seven 24-hour periods... or 7 eons of billions of years each.

  What it does say is that there were only six creative days (again, regardless of what constitutes a "day"):

  "By the seventh day,God had finished the work He had been doing and so He rested on the seventh day. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He rested from all of the creative work He had been doing." Genesis 2:2, 3

  [Yes, okay, as my Lord was recorded to say, the the Most Holy One of Israel is still working, but not with regard to creating anything physical. All of that was concluded on the sixth day.]

  Following that, the part of the physical creation that most of us know as the planet Earth, wasn't, according to the Bible, created until the second and third days and was completed in two days (again, regardless of the actual timespan), not six OR seven days. Genesis 1:6-13

  To address your comment as to "the period when the earth was formless and void," the "earth" spoken of at Genesis 1:1, is not the planet earth: the Hebrew word "'erets" is another example of the confused, if not false, stylus of the copyists: it can also mean "sheol" or... [the world of the] dead. Or... void of life, without life. Since the "light" had not yet come forth... life... had not yet come forth. This is another thread, though, so...

  But I don't have to share with you that I received such from my Lord (I did): one only need (1) look up the word, in all of its renderings, and (2) read the verse in light of the subsequent verses. For example:

  1. The "earth" was "formless" and "void". If that is true, the verse cannot be speaking of the planet earth, as the planet earth has a form: sphere(ical). If it was formLESS... then it had no shape... and no solidity. It certainly had no life or ability to support life (void). So, what is the "earth" here:

  2. The physical realm (in contrast to the "heavens" or spirit realm)... before the creation of matter.

  We can further know that this not referencing the planet earth because:

  3. The "light" and "darkness" (also referred to as "day" and "night")... had absolutely nothing to do with sun and moon. Couldn't have. Why? Because those [luminaries] weren't created yet. They didn't come into existence until the fourth day. Genesis 1:13-19 So, the light/darkness... and day/night...mentioned at Genesis 1:1-5... is not that mentioned at Genesis 1:13-19.

  My point, however, is that the belief/understanding/teaching, etc., that the earth was formed in seven days, be those days 24-hour periods each... or be they billions of years each... is not substantiated by the Genesis account and those who take the lead in teaching it really should go back and read it again.

  OR... simply go to the Source and get correct information so at least they're teaching accurately.

  Again, peace to you!

  Your servant and a slave of Christ,

  SA
• 

  jam

  Thanks Aguest; always appreciate your input and

  admire your relationship with your Lord. I will take

  some time and meditate on the things you said and

  do further research. When I begain a serious study of

  the Bible (after leaving the WT) I could never get past

  the creation account. I lost my faith on the first book

  of the Bible.
• 

  GLTirebiter

  I believe this rock called "Earth" is around 4-5 billion years old. Also that the universe it is part of was concentrated in one point about 15 billion years ago, at the origin of space time predicted by Aleksandr Friedmann and Georges Lemaître as a consequence of theory of general relativity--an event called the "Big Bang"*.

  "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." --Einstein (referring to Lemaître's talk in January 1933)

  It's easy to agree with that--unlesss you practice scriptural literalism (denying scripture writers would use figurative language to illustrate concepts beyond human experience of that time), or the philosophy of materialism (denying existence of anything besides space time, matter and energy). The first is religious and the second non-religious, but both are fundamentalism: refusal to consider anything beyond their respective orthodoxies.

  ---

  * Ironically, "Big Bang" originally was a derogatory term coined by adherents to "steady-state" theories of the universe. When the cosmic background radiation predicted by the Big Bang model was observed by Bell Labs, materialists proposed a cyclic model of eternally repeating Big Bangs ending in Big Crunches preceding the next Big Bang, ad infinitum. This theory, in turn, fell out of favor after 1998 when UC Berkeley determined that cosmic expansion is accelerating, rather than slowing as the cyclic theory predicts.