At least a million years is demanded by the evolutionist in which to evolve man from the germ-cell which they claim was the starting point of man. Haeckel with his usual boldness claimed a thousand million. Professor Hunt asked for nine million years.
Of course, Gen. 1 sets no claim for the age of the world. It may be many millions of years ago since the earth was created, so far as the Scripture narrative is concerned. Set these two Scriptures side by side and the truth of what we say will be evident.
Here we get two distinct statements—Isa. 45:1818For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:18), saying that God did not create the earth in vain (tohu), and Gen. 1:2 telling us the earth was without form (tohu). Evidently some great catastrophe must have taken place between the first and second verses of Gen. 1, and we are not told how it occurred.
But if the Bible does not furnish a date for the creation of the world, it does furnish an approximate date for the creation of man, which occurred on the sixth day of reconstruction as given to us in Gen. 1
Archbishop Ussher, using the record in the Bible of the ages of the patriarchs and its subsequent history, has made a chronology, which fixes the creation of man at about 4004 B.C. But this chronology was not inspired. Ussher generally treated each son in the genealogy as the eldest, whereas this was not necessarily the case, as witness Seth, who was Adam's third son, and Solomon, who was far from being David's eldest son. It is thus possible that Ussher's chronology is within the mark.
But the wild and immoderate guesses of the older scientists in which they juggled with millions, as easily as the schoolboy plays with his marbles, have been of late discredited. Wherever fuller light is thrown upon matters where so-called science and the Bible are at variance, it is invariably found that science has to modify its guesses and come into line with the Bible. It is thus with the Glacial Period, which has cooled the heads of younger scientists, and we have now much more modest calculations, leaving us pretty much in accord with where the Bible puts us.
Of course there are evolutionists who claim very high antiquity for man. Their theory demands it. The biologist demands 1,000,000 years for the wonderful evolution they allege began with a primordial germ-cell ending via the anthropoid ape in MAN. The reckless Haeckel estimated 1,000,000,000 years.
Professor Sir Arthur Keith claims for man an antiquity antecedent to the Glacial Period. Commenting on the Anglia skeleton he says:- " During that glacial period, England was covered with a great thickness of ice. Finally this melted and a layer of debris was deposited. It was underneath a deposit of this sort that the Anglia skeleton was found, hence he must have lived before the ice age and before the rivers formed."
But Sir Arthur cannot have it all ways. If we assume that the theory of a glacial period is true, and that consequently " England was covered with a great thickness of ice," and every living creature in England perished, then the preglacial period man could have left NO DESCENDANTS. So the Anglia skeleton cannot prove in any wise the antiquity of man, as he appears on the earth today. Moreover, the skeleton in question was that of an ordinary man, with no traces of a simian origin, thus lending no countenance to the evolutionary theory, even from Sir Arthur's point of view.
Seeing then, it is claimed, that all life was destroyed by the Glacial Period, scientists must begin the process of evolution after the Glacial Period. We shall thus see what comes of the claim of evolutionists to 1,000,000 years as necessary for the evolution of man, or even 200,000 as computed by Sir Chas. Lyell.
Professor Winchell says:—" MAN HAS NO PLACE TILL AFTER THE REIGN OF ICE. It has been imagined that the close of the reign of ice dates back perhaps a hundred thousand years. There is no evidence of this. The fact is, that we ourselves came upon the earth in time to witness the retreat of the glaciers. They still linger in the valley of the Alps and along the northern shores of Europe and Asia. The fact is, we are not so far out of the dust, chaos and barbarism of antiquity as we supposed. The very beginnings of our race are still almost in sight. Geological events which, from the force of habit in considering them, we had imagined to be located far back in the history of things, are found to have transpired at our very doors."
Sufficiently uncomfortable as the above extract is in upsetting these wild guesses as to the antiquity of man, Professor H. W. Morris is still more precise. " At the present time the earth is, in winter, in that part of her orbit where she is NEAREST to the sun—nearer by about 3,000,000 miles than in summer; and this greater proximity to the sun renders this season now comparatively mild. But it happens that about every io,000 years her winters, in the northern hemisphere, occur when she is in that part of her orbit when she is at her GREATEST DISTANCE from the sun; then those winters are of extreme and arctic severity—in fact, are prolonged one into the other, and become continuous and form a Glacial Period."
So now we have the antiquity of man reduced to something short of 10,000 years, for the period between one Ice Age and the next Ice Age—be it 10,000 years or thereabouts—must run its full course to cover the full time between the two. It is very obvious, if this is true, that we are in that period, and if the Biblical record is correct, which we believe it is, we have run about 6,000 to 7,000 years since man was created.
But then the Bible tells us this earth will be destroyed by fire not by frost. Frost can destroy all life, but it cannot destroy, though it may alter, the inorganic. The mighty force of ice may carve out channels for rivers and alter the face of the earth, but it cannot do more. Fire can and will destroy the whole earth according to the Bible. If such be the case this earth will never again see an Ice Age, and it looks as if preceding Ice Ages have been used of God for the preparation of this earth for the habitation of man, and in these few thousand years the whole scheme of God as to man will be carried out.
That destruction of life by frost and of the earth by fire are possible is borne out by the statements of scientists apart from the Bible, and yet the Bible is in accord with these statements. Where did the Bible get such knowledge? You cannot find it in any other ancient book.
We have given testimony as to the Ice Age, corroborated by the destruction of life, as seen in the mammoth creatures, whose existence is known by their fossil remains, and who have left no descendants. We will now give testimony as to the possibility of the earth being destroyed by fire; but which the Bible states will take place. If this is so, it must be before the time for the return of the Glacial Period. The internal condition of our planet warrants the belief, even apart from the Bible, that it may be destroyed by fire. The following striking quotation is worth reading.
"Will the world flare up like Beta Ceti, the star that has suddenly blazed to ten times its normal brilliance? M. Camille Flammarion states that the possibility exists. Let the world be burned and humanity incinerated, and all that could be seen would be but a spot of light in the sky. Speaking of the process, should such a thing happen, Monsieur Flammarion says, ` Our own planet is an extinguished celestial body, a long-dead sun, which is covered by a skin so thin that it corresponds to a sheet of newspaper stuck round an orange. Its internal fires cause the globe to swell and deflate by a movement of something like sixteen to twenty inches. 'Supposing then,' he adds, ' a massive celestial body approached us, these tremendous internal tidal forces would be agitated to an enormous extent, so great that the envelope on which we live would be rent open, bursting away part of the earth's crust. This would instantly lead to a partial, if not total, extinction of humanity, poisoned and burned by the release of internal gases. The thin paper crust would be hurled aside, the earth twisted into a shapeless mass, humanity reduced to dust. Though it would be the end of our world, in the history of the heavens it would be a mere incident, as insignificant as a falling star.' "
We will now proceed to quote the conclusions scientists have come to as to the antiquity of man, and we shall see that with the fullest knowledge of the present time they approximate to what the Bible sets forth as to the antiquity of man.
Professor G. Frederick Wright, one of the ablest glacialogists in America, reaches the conclusion that the Ice Age ended not earlier than from 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Professor Joseph Prestwick placed it within the limit of 12,000 years.
M. Adhemar and Dr. James Croll stand for 11,000 years.
Professor P. D. Salisbury and Dr. Warren Uphans, among the most recent of American geologists, come to the conclusion that from 7,000 to 10,000 years is a fair calculation.
It is curious how the calculations of the ancients as to the creation of the world coincide very much with those of the scientists just quoted. The following list is interesting.
Indian Chronology—B.C. 6,204
Arab Chronology—B.C. 6,174
Babylonian Chronology—B.C. 6,158
Chinese Chronology—B.C. 6,157
Egyptian Chronology—B.C. 6,081
Septuagint Chronology—B.C. 5,586
Josephus Chronology—B.C. 5,555
Alexandrine Chronology—B.C. 5,508
Persian Chronology—B.C. 5,507
Abyssinian Chronology—B.C. 5,500
Talmudists Chronology—B.C. 5,344
Samaritan Chronology—B.C. 4,427
Hebrew Chronology—B.C. 4,161
English Bible Chronology—B.C. 4,004
The years of our present epoch must be added to these figures. It will thus be seen that something less than 6,000 years is the lowest and something over 8,000 years the highest figure suggested by these chronologies for the ' antiquity of man. These calculations are extracted from Young's Analytical Concordance, p. 210.