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Thanks for the questions brother Merkin.

Regarding the age of the earth, because I don’t know the actual or approximate age of the earth, I have an open mind about it. I don’t rule out the Young Earth Creationists, who say the earth is less than 10,000 years old. They actually have some interesting points, like I didn’t know that modern science dates the age of the earth not with rocks from the earth but rocks from outer space which is, kinda unscientific, don’t ya think? But anyway, I tend to lean towards the gap theory where the earth is very old but it is strictly the Adamic race that is less than 10,000 years old.

I don’t know if this answers your second question, but I think the Genesis account is the account of Adam and Eve, from which we all our descendants of. We are all members of the Adamic race.

Regarding prior accounts of man’s time on earth, let it suffice to say that I only know all kinds of things could have been going on prior to Adam and then the Lord said let us make man in our image and waaa-laaaah, here we are .

I don’t know when the race differences came about, but regarding the physical dispersion of people, that occurred after the flood during the time of Peleg when the land was divided into continents (see Genesis 10:25). And it was during this time that the average lifespan of humans decreased dramatically. Here are some thoughts on that:

This world was perfect at one time, before the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. When mankind was judged by God and God “smacked” the earth, so to speak, with the flood of Noah, the axis of the earth was knocked off its axis and became tilted, giving us an imperfect 365.24 days a year. But before that, a year consisted of exactly 360 days and each month was exactly 30 days. You can extrapolate 30 day months from the timeline of the flood of Noah, which started on the 17th day of the 2nd month as per Genesis 7:11, lasted for 5 months or 150 days (5months@30days each) as per Genesis 8:3, and ended on the 17th day of the 7th month as per Genesis 8:4. Before this, because there was no tilt of the earth’s axis and because there was a water vapor canopy in the atmosphere above the earth (GENESIS 1:6-7), the pre-flood earth was an ideal place for human habitation. The temperature was just right, not too hot, not too cold. So in this pristine environment, Adam (who had lost his eternal life) lived for 930 years. Noah also lived 900+ years.

But then after the flood, because there was no longer a water vapor canopy in the atmosphere and because the earth’s axis became titled—resulting in a more harsh environment temperature wise—the average lifespan of humans was just about cut in half to around 400 years or so. You can see this in Genesis 11:11-15.

Then, another event lead to the cutting in about half the average lifespan of humans—and that was, the dividing of the earth during the time of Peleg (Genesis 10:25). Perhaps this was due to the release of Radon gas when the earth was opened up. And perhaps before the time of Peleg, the land mass of the earth formed a diamond shape—hence the Biblical saying of the “four corners of the earth”. But after the time of Peleg, when the earth was divided, the average lifespan of humans dropped to around 200 years or so (as per Genesis 11:21-32).

And so because of the fall of mankind and the judgment from God that followed, we now live in an imperfect earth with all kinds of disease and imperfections and what not. However, the GOOD NEWS is this: all that was lost to mankind in the Garden of Eden and more can be restored to each and every person by believing on Jesus Christ. You can regain eternal life and you can live in perfect harmony in the New Jerusalem and rule and reign with Jesus for all time to come in the new world and new universe God will create a little over one thousand years from now.

@Merkin: who asked, “How old do you think this physical world has been around?”

I could be wrong but this is the interpretation that I find best suited for understanding the first few verses in Genesis:

Genesis 1:1-2: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And 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.

The phrase ‘In the beginning’ really is closer to being a ‘big inning’ than just the point at which things started. It tells that God made the heavens and the earth, but doesn’t give an inkling as to when or how. The idea is bolstered by the fact that when Hebrew writers wanted to note the actual beginning of a time, as the time of day or week when a harvest commenced for example, the word employed was most often ‘techillah’. This word connotes an opening or commencement. And this passage avoids the use of this word. ‘Techillah’ wasn’t the word Moses chose to tell about the beginning of the heavens and the Earth. In other words, this opening passage of the Bible isn’t necessarily telling about the start of things as is often thought but rather denotes that a period took place during which that first state of being took place and during which God created the heavens and the earth.

In the second verse, the word ‘waw’ is translated ‘and’. However, ‘waw’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘and’. It can also mean ‘but’. The ‘and’ was chosen simply because the translators felt it fit well there when reading it in the context of the two verses together. This alternate reading with ‘but’ suggests that even though God had created the heavens and the earth in a perfect form during the previous period (as described in verse 1), an event took place before verse 2 that has caused the whole world to become chaotic. It can then be seen that something has changed, and that while this is a beginning for the saga of mankind, there was, in every likelihood, a previous existence of some sort. God has no real end but is eternal, one must therefore assume that the ‘beginning’ before His works simply means: before what can be seen in this age was created, not before God. So this suggests that some cataclysmic event has taken place, causing the old world to be totally wasted and uninhabitable. The original creation, which had been perfect, had ‘become’ desolate and void. I believe that whatever event that it was that caused everything to ‘without form and void’ has something to do with the asteroid belt and what’s on Mars.

The Hebrew word ‘tohuw’ is translated as ‘without form’. This word appears elsewhere in the Bible and takes on some finer associations and meanings, including formlessness, confusion, unreality, and emptiness. It also is associated with the unreal, as with an idol as well as wasteland and solitary wilderness. In the adverbial form, ‘tohuw’ means ‘wastefully’ or ‘in vain’. Thus, while the word used here means primarily a wasteland, there are undercurrents and hints of idolatry, pride, and sin through the choice of this word.

The Hebrew word ‘bohuw’ is generally employed throughout the Bible in connection with the desolation of a city or nation. It also connotes an undercurrent of judgment from God (as in Isaiah 34:11 where the Lord’s judgment results in desolation). Thus, when the earth was ‘void’ it was desolate. That this is a judgment from God is further bolstered by the idea that darkness is upon the face of the earth, since this is associated with evil in the Bible while God is associated with light. Thus, the ‘without form, and void’ suggests not just physical desolation but spiritual as well.

The ‘deep’, or ‘tehom’, further reinforces this feeling that things were under judgment. While this word is often associated with the sea or deep water, it has other shades of meaning as well, including the abyss and the grave. Thus, ‘tehom’ is employed in Genesis 7:11 where it is translated as ‘the great waters’ of Noah’s Flood and in Psalm 36:6 as a ‘a great deep’ associated with the God’s judgment. The deep does refer to the ocean. But it also is symbolic of a judgment against wrongdoing and bolsters the overall feel that things are not right in creation as the opening passage of Genesis suggests.

Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The ‘Let there be light’ phrase does not appear to be a creative act when one studies the Hebrew words and their usage here. Most likely, the universe of stars, sun and moon were created during the ‘in the beginning’ period but not visible on the earth, due to the darkness that apparently enveloped it. This also explains why the earth could be in existence during a long span of time without there being days and nights on the surface. For some reason, a thick cloud cover or water canopy perhaps, daylight didn’t reach the surface of the planet. This, in turn, suggests that something evil might very well have changed the planet for the worse. Only when God was preparing to create man and living organisms on the face of the planet did He make days and nights appear on its surface. Time didn’t start with the first day on Earth; but the separation of day and night on the surface of the planet made it possible to tell time as the first days started rolling around, marking God’s creation of life on the planet.

This reading of the past is not disproven by fossil records or the like because it’s not only possible but almost a certainty that pre-historic, pre-Adamic life was on earth ‘before’ the Genesis 1:2 reforming of an earth that had become formless and void. If anything, fossils buttress this reading of the Genesis account with its re-creation of the creatures that now inhabit it and the vanishing of the vast hordes of creatures such as the dinosaurs.

The Hebrew story of creation cannot be viewed as an isolated account known only to the ancient Jews. Rather, it is a story that has been mimicked and copied by very many other cultures, some of which could not have seen the Hebrew writings before developing their own versions of the basic story. That stories with similar elements sprang up in very different cultures around the world suggests that these stories have a common origin, with the Biblical account arguably the most accurate due to the unique pains that were taken in keeping the stories true to the original Word. Please note that the scribes copying the various books of the Old and New Testaments did so with strict supervision and careful checking by the scribe as well as those working with him to avoid errors. Where many cultures rewarded the embellishment of stories, the Jewish writers worked in the opposite direction: the stories were never to be altered even by punctuation.