The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1301-A, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 3."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  ©1976. All Rights Reserved.

Question

How can we say the universe is so young when the stars are millions of light years away?

Answer

Now, this question has come up before, and what it means is this: you know, they tell us that certain stars are "X" number of light years away, millions of light years away. And so, the argument is, alright, if you say that God created everything, say 10,000 years ago, that’s not time enough for the light from the stars that He created to get to the earth. You see, you’ve got to have millions of years for that light to get here so that we can see it, so that the beam of that light gets out far enough so that our naked eye can see it.

So, they say there’s no way God could instantaneously create the universe in a six-day period so that man would arrive on the seventh day and see the stars; they need millions of years to get here.

The answer to that is simple, people. The answer to that is that when God created, He created with maturity. When He created the stars, He created the stars—zap!—with all their light already created clear to the earth. When God created man, one second after you met Adam, you would have met a full-grown man, right? God created him with maturity. All of creation was that way.

When God created the animals, He didn’t create a whole bunch of little fetuses; He created animals, full-grown, mature animals.

It’s true in the New Testament. We were talking about this the other day, that the miracles of Jesus were always instant. There was no process involved. When He would create a new limb for a person, it was a mature limb. When Lazarus was raised from the dead, he was raised from the dead instantly, mature—a grown man. When Jesus made wine, it didn’t go through a process; it was wine! He created all things with maturity. And so, we can say it doesn’t matter how long we calculate the light would have taken to get from there to here; it matters that when God created it, He created it there and the light in the middle and us here.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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