Sunday Sermon: What is the age of the Universe?

 Looking at the world through the eyes of faith is not a good way to get a handle 

Allan:

When we add up the ages of Adam and Seth and Enos and Lamach and Methuselah and Enoch and all the Bible characters, all the way through Abraham, all the way to the time of Christ, they add up to a certain number. The chronologists argue about the exact number, but it's pretty approximate that right now the earth is about 6000 years old. 

Virtually all Bible scholars agree with that. (Really?)

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1st 2000 years period - Patriarchs.

The first 2000 years of the world's history God preached the gospel through the patriarchs. That goes from creation, when Christ created the world, up until Abraham. That's the age of the patriarchs. They were not Jews. God's people were people like Adam and Seth and Enoch and Methuselah and Noah and Shem.

2d 2000 years period - Abraham - Jews.

Then exactly 2000 years later, Abraham was born. For the next 2000 years God preaches the gospel through the Jews. That was the age of the Hebrews. That's from about 2004 BC until Christ. God gave the truth to these special people so they would spread it throughout the world.

3d 2000 years period - Jesus - us.

Then the next 2000 years started. The gospel was given to the world by Jesus who was born about 4 BC.Yes, BC or Before Christ. He was born 4 years before Christ. Sounds weirdly wrong, right? But when historians set up the dating method they did it before they had a lot of the information. They found out that King Herod the Great died about 2 or 3 BC. He's the one who killed all the babies in Bethlehem. Christ had to be born before Herod died. So they fixed the date of Christ's birth about 4 BC. And by the way, Jesus was baptized when He was about 30 years of age, in AD 27. We know it was AD 27. We know He was 30 years of age, from Luke 3. So Jesus couldn't have been born in the year zero. Historians just messed up and by the time they realized their mistake, the whole world had accepted and written all documents with this AD/BC dating method. It was too late to go backwards and redo it, so we're stuck with an inaccurate calendar. So the calendar is messed up, but it's too late to change it.

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So Jesus was born 4 BC. Then if you go approximately 2000 years from the birth of Christ, that puts you at the year 1996, 1997 (you count backwards four years from the year 2000) depending on what you do with that first year.

Plus all 3 2,000 years old periods and you find that the earth is approximately 6000 years old.

There is an interesting pattern.

1. Six days the Lord creates the world. He rests on the seventh day.
2. Six days you work, on the seventh day you rest according to the 4th commandment .
3. Jews also used to farm their land for six years. The seventh year they would allow earth to rest, it would be desolate for a year.
4. 6,000 years is given to the earth's history, then the 1,000 years the earth is going to “rest”. God’s people are taken to heavenly Jerusalem at that time, and earth is empty and desolate. ( Rev. 20) It is a millennial “week”. It's like a 1,000-year sabbath rest.

So there's this pattern here. I'm not the only one that says this. Martin Luther said this too and many other great Bible scholars said it. For 6000 years Satan held people captive forever, but Christ will set the prisoners free with His coming after 6000 years. So 6000 years on earth, then 1000 in heaven for a total of 7000. Then He comes back, He makes a new heaven and a new earth.

We're living right now in this very narrow strip of time. 6,000 years will soon come to a close. 

Are you ready?

Christiana Hope (Well Christina, don't get your hopes too high or you might be in for a bit of a disappointment!)