I don't know exactly how long these time-frames are, but there's a hint in this quote of significant time before earth existed.

God has always existed, but He doesn't need to inhabit space like we do. So the universe is probably much younger than God.

Angels are spirits. Maybe they don't need to inhabit space like we do. So it's possible that the angels are older than the universe.

Creating a universe without life does seem pointless, so I think it is safe to assume that God created life along with the universe.


The quote I gave said that they were around for "ages" before sin entered. If we can figure out how long an "age" is, then the angels were at least twice that old when Satan sinned.

In any case, I don't see why there couldn't have been billions of years before man came on the scene. For eternal beings, 15 billion years is just a drop in the ocean.


As I said above, for beings who don't die, a few billion years here and there is not really much. From a purely mathematical perspective, 1 second comprises a greater percentage of my lifespan than 100 billion years in theirs.

But let's do some conjecturing with relativity. General relativity says that the nearer you are to a gravitational source, the slower you clock goes. Assuming that heaven is very massive compared to earth, we could calculate what mass heaven needs to have so that a day there is a thousand years here (or any other length of time we choose).

Let's throw in E=mc^2. We know that God is very energetic. He had enough energy to form such massive objects as stars just by speaking. That energy is equivalent to quite a bit of mass, which results in gravity, which results in gravitational time dilation.

So, it is plausible that angels reckon time differently.


Stars are not forms of life. For one, they don't reproduce. They are just inanimate objects.

Let's simplify it by thinking of them as big balls of hydrogen. Matter is turned into energy when hydrogen turns into helium. When all the hydrogen has changed into helium, the change from matter to energy stops. The star is "dead" now.

But that's like then you light your stove. Gas combines with oxygen, generating heat and forming other chemicals. When the gas stops, the fire stops.

How about monkeys? Well, food is turned into "monkey" cells and "monkey" energy. Stop the food, the monkey stops eventually. So, the monkey must look for more bananas to continue its life.


Maybe God can give it more bananas (hydrogen, actually). If He can speak things into existence, He can certainly speak more hydrogen into the center of the sun. He probably has other options as well.


Well, cosmology is a slippery fish. There was a time when everyone believed the size of the universe was constant (leading to Einstein's Cosmological Constant). Then they saw galaxies hurtling away from each other, so they believed it was expanding at a constant rate. Then their calculations didn't work, so they said the universe experienced rapid expansion for a very short time (i.e., the universe took 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds to expand 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times its size), then slowed down. Now, they say that it's speeding up again because of some anti-gravitational energy that nobody can detect, but they're sure it's there. Sounds like a lot of guessing to me.

In any case, a 13-billion-year-old universe is not a deal-breaker. As long as we don't believe that life just gradually evolved from nothingness into what we see now. The fact is that He who is Life came along and said, "Let there be _______," and there it was.

I have no problem with the universe being billions of years old. It took a long time of growing before the Lucifer began to question which lead to the Great Controversy.

One of the reasons why the earth looks a lot older than it is comes from the universe being ancient, and God showing that he could create a world that was already billions of years old on the day it was created. That God was not just being aware when Mother Nature was going to make a brand new sparkling planet that God was simply taking credit for. A brand new planet would not have shown the creative power of God.

I totally get what you're asking here because I had the same questions. There are two main concepts that a creationist could appeal to.

The first being that everything was spoken into existence complete, the way creation is described ... and that would include the light evidence. Starting at once but taking time to expose that which is far off...at the speed of light those stars which could be seen within the light wave from our perspective would appear to light up as a wave in all directions.

Or second, That creation was built off of a planetary object floating in the blackness of space spoken into existence so long ago it's not recorded in Genesis, held in check until God decided to create here.

I tend to view the first scenario most intriguing. Especially in consideration with your first question about black holes.

I am of the belief that everything created in THIS universe was made for us. Think about it, have you ever heard how inhospitable space is? Why would God allow un-fallen worlds to be subject to the torn universal elements that we have here in this universe, compared to how heaven is described?
There are black holes and pulsars and quasars and Novas and super novas and galexies colliding into one another...is that heaven? NO WAY.

I feel convinced that this universe is for us. It was God's way to quarantine sin and sinners. Our minds have tried to escape the prison of earth in many different ways, all forms of the tower of Babel, but we are still imprisoned. The only way off is on the bridge to heaven, Jesus.

Adam was the representative of this universe, all of the created Sons of God have their own universes, and this is all under the HEAVENLY UNIVERSE where they all are sheltered.

Check this out, after I had this cool revelation I read this article from scientific America Magazine perfectly illustrating this theory. http://www.mukto-mona.com/science/physics/ParalellUniverse2003.pdf

The article brakes all the different theories about space into different categories. I tend to believe in the Level II muti-verse theory. But I also believe a variation of the Level Three muti-verse theory could explain how angels could be in our presence without us seeing them.



My view is very similar to this theory, but from the perspective of the Father, outside all the bubbles looking in.

Jesus spoke it all into existence but it is obvious that even in this fallen condition, our Universe is still expanding and growing with new stars. This gift speaks of the ever growing love of the Father. God is perfect, but His perfection grows, and in His creation His love blossoms. (I know people will quote that God is the same today and tomorrow and forever, but I also recall God the Father loves the Son MORE for what He did for us, and the angels sing a note higher after the recreation of earth.)

It's a really great article, check it out. I also have oodles of other cool substantiative theories if your interested.

I believe all of the damage being done in our universe was as a result of sin. Satan was let loose out of his prison after the fall and he set about doing the dirty on our universe. One planet collides into another, and the fragments collide into earth and bring down the Upper Firmament of water above, and cracked the shell of earth below into tectonic plates at the time of the great flood, and so on.

Nice quote. Hadn't noticed this, although I've read this passage.

I made my statement about it not being billions of years because of how the narrative read to me, from SP and other places. I hadn't noticed the quote with the "ages" that you cited. Perhaps I should reread the accounts. My impression had been that beings hadn't been around that long. While billions of years is not a long time for eternal beings, it's a very long time in terms of fleshing out different scenarios. God always knew of the possibility of the existence of sin, so His character would have mandated His working to make the universe "fail safe."

This might be cryptic; I don't have time to go into a lot of detail, so hopefully a brief explanation of how I'm thinking will be clear. The SOP speaks of how even holy angels were made secure by the cross, and that it wasn't until then that they truly understood the issues of the GC and that God was right/Satan was lying. The holy angels had made their choice to be on God's side although they didn't understand the issues completely. This is how the chapter "It Is Finished" from "The Desire of Ages" reads to me.

So the principle of the cross is what makes/made the universe "fail-safe." Is it actually necessary for sin to occur in order for the universe to be fail-safe? I don't think so. If not, we can assume that God was working to make the universe fail-safe, and I don't think it would take billions of years to accomplish this.

If we assume that sentient life has been around for billions of years, then the conclusion would seem to me inevitable that God couldn't do anything to make the universe "fail-safe" until sin occurred. I find that view problematic, as it would make sin something useful, perhaps even necessary.

Hope I'm being clear. Thanks for entering into the discussion. I think this is a fascinating topic.

I think there is an assumption you left out of your possibilities. Could the evidence for the age of the universe be misinterpreted?

I've read about the universe expanding which affects the estimated age from the light heading towards us, but also moving away from us.

But, that doesn't really change your question.

As already mentioned, stars are not living objects. So, they cannot really "die". However, if this was a perfect system, you would not think they would have "run down" before sin entered. But, keep in mind, one person's description of destruction is another person's description of art.

After sin entered our world, it would not be imagined other worlds were created. Other worlds exist. Therefore, saying life did not exist in the universe before our world would not be correct. Life still doesn't exist on Mars (unless you count the "bunnies").

I see the earth and the sun already existing prior to life on our planet. Lot's of geology give evidence of the raw materials being greater than 10K years, although there is also evidence being less. The verse says the sun was made to rule the day, not necessarily created. Many planets rotate parallel to their orbit. Could God creating the sun to rule the day and be for seasons be putting the correct angle and spin on the earth?

James, thanks for your post. Haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but noticed it and wanted to acknowledge it. Should get around to it later today.

Arnold, regarding:



I alluded to this in an earlier post, and mentioned relativity. I'm not really caring about actual time elapsed (which, I know, doesn't event make sense to say from a relativistic standpoint), but about the experiences the angels would have had. In billions of years, they would have had trillions of experiences, as we reckon time. What doesn't make sense to me is that they would have had trillions of experiences, and then sin emerges.

No, I thought of this. I thought I mentioned it. Several have pointed out this possibility, and I think it's likely, such as it's likely (putting it mildly) that the evidence for a world-wide flood has somehow been misinterpreted.



Several have suggested the idea of adding "food" to the star/sun, and this seems like a viable option. This was more of a minor point to the discussion, as my mentioning the death of the star has more to do with the age of the universe. If the universe is not at least millions of years old, how do we explain the evidence of dying stars? That was the question in that part of the quote. Evidence of a dying star implies a very old universe because first of all, it takes light a long time to get to us in the first place, and secondly, even more importantly as far as age is concerned, it takes a long time for a star to die.



Certainly I agree that life existed, I just have trouble with the idea that it's existed for billions of years. But I'm open to what others think, which is why I posted this, to hear ideas.



It seems possible to me that the sun/earth could be older than a few thousand years, but if that's the case, I would expect them to be so together. Green Cochoa, if I understood him correctly, suggested the earth was very, very old, but the sun just a few thousand years old. That doesn't seem like a viable alternative to me.

I'm curious as to what evidence you have in mind. A lot of the evidence can be interpreted differently if you allow for a world-wide flood.

James, thx for your response. I probably won't have time to read the article for awhile, but perhaps next week I can. I think I understood what you said, which is that our fallenness applies only to our "bubble," whereas unfallen worlds are in another bubble. Is this correct? If so, I have some follow up questions, but I'll wait until you confirm, so I don't waste time asking questions about something you weren't saying.

Regarding my question about black holes/dead stars, I understand that God could speak things into existence so that it might look to us like they were older than they really are. I gave Adam as an example. He would have looked 30 years old, or so, as we reckon time, even when only an instant old. Something similar could be the case for the universe.

This applies to stars which are alive, as we see their light. But what about dead stars? If they didn't die until Adam sinned, then why do we see that evidence? Assuming Adam lived a few thousand years ago, our seeing evidence shouldn't have happened for millions of years.