Hi guys. This is Tom. Sorry it's been such a long time, just been really, really busy with work.

Here's a question I've been wondering about, which I'd like to see what you think. I didn't know where would be the best place to post this, so I'm posting it here, as a General Discussion question.

I'm wondering how to understand black holes, or, more generally, the death of stars in general. If we see the death of a star that X Millions of light years away, that would imply the star is older than X Millions of years. I wouldn't expect stars to be dying without sin existing. There are several possibilities I can think of:

1.The evidence for the death of stars is being misinterpreted.
2.The universe was created billions of years ago, and they physicists think, and the death of stars is a normal course of events, and has nothing to do with the existence of sin.
3.The universe was created with an apparent age of greater than it actually is (like Adam appearing to be an adult, which he was, at creation, even though he was only seconds old).

I know this isn't really well explained, what I'm getting at, but hopefully clearly enough. I can explain more later, as the discussion gets going, if needed.

The basic question is why we see evidence of the death of stars millions of years ago. Does this mean the universe is millions of years old? Does it imply that sin occurred millions of years ago?

Perhaps #2. The Bible tells us that before God began His creative work here, the earth was without form and void. IOW, the earth was in a chaotic state, which means that there was chaos before sin. So it seems that, in this case, chaos has nothing to do with sin. Perhaps this could also be true of the cataclysmic processes related to stars.

Yes, the earth is billions of years old and as Rosangela said -the earth was in a chaotic state proir to the creation of man...
...According to the so called Bible liquid water also existed prior to God starting His creation event.
...I could easily be wrong but have always thought earth is the Eden of the cosmos.
...Like Eden was the paradice of planet earth.

The geologic evidence doesn't appear to me to support the idea that the earth is billions of years old, unless we assume it existed without life for billions of years. Even then I would have questions.

What do you guys think?

Many have the opinion that the earth may have existed without life for some time before God decided to create life on it.

Glad to see you back!

The universe is certainly quite old, don't you think?

But "dying" is just the word we use to describe a part of a natural cycle. It isn't as though the star were actually a living organism, so we aren't dealing with true "death" such as would have come only from the sin condition.

As an example, when we are in sinless Heaven, we will eat the fruit and leaves of the Tree of Life. Is it objectionable that the tree should have its fruits and leaves devoured? Is this a "death" for them?

I see some of these things as God-ordained biological cycles which are neither the result of sin, nor are they any less than perfect. God designed it thus.


I would go mostly with your #2 option, although I think in some cases #3 also applies (such as with Adam, as in your example). I do not think God created rays of light from the stars to our earth in order to short-circuit the normal speed at which that light should arrive. (Some actually believe this.) I believe those stars have existed long enough for their light to reach us according to the natural laws ordained by God.



No, it need not be that sin occurred that long ago. The stars may have their own cycles, as ordained by God, without sin. But, yes, the universe is almost certainly at least millions of years old.

The Bible speaks of the earth prior to Creation Week. There are three things that appear to have pre-existed that week, according to the record in Genesis 1.

1) Water
2) Land
3) Stars

In the first case, we never see God saying something like "Let there be water." In fact, the water is never created during the week, but rather the Holy Spirit is hovering over the water before God speaks.

In the second case, again, God does not say "Let there be land." What He says is, "let the dry land appear." This shows two things: 1) the land was first wet, and 2) the land was not before apparent to view. It implies the land was submerged.

In the third case, the stars appear in Day 4 as a parenthetical statement. "He made the stars also." This is the only occurrence of the word "also" in the entire chapter, and does not indicate the stars as an afterthought so much as an additional explanation--indicating that God had made them too, albeit not necessarily at that time. Another possible way to look at it, though, is that God set the planets in our solar system as "stars" on that day (wandering stars).

Well, those are my thoughts on the subject.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Yes, the "empty" and "void" context of the earth implies a place devoid of life. Just like a programmer can have an empty array or hash--it is a place, may even have a name or "handle," but it contains nothing...yet.

I believe our earth sat here for some time before Creation Week, and it was during that week that something was made of it, and life was put into it.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

That's true, but many disagree as well. I haven't researched what EGW may have written on the subject, if anything.

"For some time" would be greatly understating things, if what we're really talking about is 5 billion years, or something like that. But these ideas, based on science, are inextricably tied to the idea of evolution. I know of no scientists who think the earth is billions of years old, but evolution didn't occur. So if we say that the earth existed before day one of the creation week, why are we saying so? Based on what? I understand one could make a linguistic argument, as linguistically there seems to be quite a division as to whether the implication is the earth already existed, or didn't, but would there be some other reason for such an idea, besides the linguistic one?

Why would God create the universe to exist for billions of years without life? That doesn't really make sense to me.

By the way, I'm just asking questions here. I don't have a strong conviction here. I guess the thing that makes the most sense to me is a young earth/universe scenario, mostly from the standpoint of logic(i.e., what seems logical to me) but I'm interested in what others have concluded.

Do you mean like billions of years? Or a small amount of time? Do you have some reason for thinking so other than a linguistic one? As I've pointed out, the Genesis 1 passage is greatly debated as to the implication of prior existence of the earth.

Regarding the universe being quite old, I guess I would say, I doubt it. I think the universe is as old as angels are, as I don't see why God would have created a lifeless universe to exist for eons without life. I don't know how old angels are, but my impression is that they may have been around for some time before man created (well, must have been for some time, obviously), but that it wasn't a great deal of time, certainly not billions of years. Of course, one question which comes up here is how we render time, since we know from relativity that time is relative, so how we reckon time on earth may not correspond directly to how angels would reckon it.

Regarding the "dying" comment, I agree that there could be a natural process involved which would lead to stars ceasing to exist which wouldn't necessarily be tied to the existence of sin, but that doesn't really make sense to me. Will forms of life die, or exist eternally? Like a tree, for example? Will trees die? I don't think so; I think they'll live for ever. So will ants, and bacteria, and all forms of life, it seems to me. So if this is so for these examples, why not for stars?

To my way of thinking, a star burning out implies something went wrong somewhere. Certainly the sun won't ever burn out, correct?

Regarding the stars existing long enough for light to reach us according to the natural laws, this is certainly a logical idea, but it is my understanding that this idea would lead to the idea of the universe being something like 13 billion years old, or whatever they're saying now. It seems odd to me that God would have created the universe to exist for that long without life, but I suppose that's possible, as it's certainly the case that God reckons time differently than we do.

Thanks for sharing your ideas. What do you think of the following:



That is, if the evening and the morning were the first day on day one of the creation week, why would this be the case if the sun and the earth already existed? What would drawing dry land from an already existing wet earth have to do with this?