(Christian News Network) – In a recent episode of the “700 Club,” televangelist Pat Robertson was asked about his assertion that God took “billions” and “millions” of years to create the universe and Earth, and again claimed that there is “no way” that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Apologist Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, who has many times expressed concern about Robertson’s views, says that Robertson is putting a “stumbling block” before others by not taking the creation account in Genesis literally and authoritatively.
On April 13, during the Q&A period of the broadcast, co-host Terry Meeuwsen read a question from a viewer about a statement in Robertson’s book “Ten Laws for Success.” “Think of the patience of the Creator, who waited fourteen billion years to see His universe take shape,” the publication states. “Think of the hundreds of millions of years that God took to prepare our planet as a sustainable dwelling place for human being made in the image of God.” READ MORE
I liked Pat R. at one time but, lately, he’s been a little “off-kilter” with some of these unsubstantiated assertions about eschatology and geology.
Bible chronology reveals it has been only about 6000 years since Adam began, till today. All nature has beauty and complexity! Eccl 3:11 tells God ‘..made everything beautiful in his time’. When one meditates on the beauty of God’s creation in its form, flora, and fauna; its colors, intricacies and details, one can conclude that God does not create nothingness (void), but is very purposeful and wise in all that He does.
The prophet Jeremiah revealed what may have happened when the earth was without form, and void. Jeremiah used the same phrase as in Ge1:2- ‘I beheld the earth and lo, it was WITHOUT FORM, AND VOID’ v23. Jeremiah implied there was a pre-Adamic existence of inhabitants and cities. He wrote ‘I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man.. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black’ Je4:23-28.
The whole earth became desolate (void), all cities and all living creature destroyed, and the heavens blackened (darkness) because of God’s fierce anger, but ‘yet will I not make a full end‘, suggesting earth was re-created later in Ge1:6-12! Here Je4:25 is a key verse; ‘I beheld, and lo, there was NO MAN..’ suggesting that man was completely gone from the earth, and implying God had once destroyed the earth before Adam was created.
Scientists say that the original earth is about 4.5 billion years old, based on radiometric age dating of meteorite material, on the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunarsamples. The age of the universe is placed at 14 billion years old. Since Adam, 6000 years ago, at no time was there an absence of man living on the earth, even after the great Noahic flood, when all perished except only 8 people. But Jeremiah wrote of a pre-Adamic civilization Je4:23-28, even as many archaeologists have suggested or proven by carbon dating. Something happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. This is called ‘THE GAP THEORY OF CREATION’!
See https://drgoldsite.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/in-the-beginning-the-history-of-god-creation-and-man/