by Colt Howell
Before You Roll Your Eyes…
Let’s be honest…believing in a young earth isn’t exactly “cool” these days. Say it out loud, and people might assume you’ve traded your brain for a Bible and left science behind. But that’s not fair, and it’s not true.
This isn’t about rejecting science. It’s about taking God at His word. It’s about asking, “What has God actually said?” before assuming we already know.
I’m not writing this to pick fights or draw battle lines. Faithful Christians disagree here, and that’s okay. But I want to lay out why I believe the young-earth view isn’t just possible or plausible-it’s deeply biblical, theologically coherent, and beautifully consistent with the gospel story itself.
So, here’s the case-five reasons I think the earth is younger than most people think.
1. The Bible actually says it
Genesis 1 says God created the world in six days, with each day marked by “evening and morning.” That’s the normal way Scripture talks about literal days. Not symbolic ages. Not eras.
And if that weren’t clear enough, Exodus 20:11 spells it out:
“In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth…and rested on the seventh day.”
That’s God talking. And He connects His six-day creation to Israel’s six-day work week. Why? Because they’re both actual, literal days.
2. Jesus and the apostles treat Genesis as real history
This isn’t just about Genesis. It’s about how Jesus read Genesis. He didn’t treat it as myth or metaphor. He said:
“From the beginning, God made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4).
Paul does the same. He treats Adam as a real historical figure (Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15). He grounds the gospel on a real man bringing sin and death into the world-and a real Savior undoing it.
So if Jesus and Paul took Genesis as history… why shouldn’t we?
3. Old-earth views are theologically messy
This is where I think things start to break down. And again, hear me clearly, I’m not saying old-earth Christians are denying the gospel. I’m saying the logic of the old-earth position tends to create theological tension.
Why? Because old-earth models almost always require death, disease, and suffering to exist before Adam sinned.
But the Bible says:
“Through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Rom. 5:12).
Death is not just a natural part of creation, it’s a judgment. A curse. The enemy Jesus came to destroy.
If death was already baked into the world before sin, that raises hard questions: What was the Fall? What did it break? What did Jesus come to reverse?
That’s what I mean by theologically messy. The pieces just don’t seem to fit as cleanly.
4. The gospel pattern works with a young earth framework
God created a good world. Sin broke it. Death came as judgment. Jesus came to undo that judgment and make all things new.
That pattern is the spine of the Bible. It holds everything together. But if you stretch out creation over billions of years, with death before the fall, you break that spine.
The gospel starts to wobble.
But if Genesis means what it says, the pattern holds:
Creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration.
That’s the biblical story-and it’s beautiful, powerful, and cohesive.
5. If God can raise the dead, He can make the world in six days
Let’s be honest, some Christians lean old-earth because they’re trying to make Christianity more respectable to the scientific world. They don’t want to look foolish.
And again, I get that. There’s pressure. We don’t want to sound like we’re ignoring science.
But listen: our faith is built on something far more “foolish” in the eyes of the world than six-day creation. It’s built on a dead man getting out of the grave.
If you can believe that, and you must if you’re a Christian, then believing God spoke galaxies into existence in six days should be no stretch at all.
The question isn’t, “What does science say?”
The question is, “Has God spoken?”
And He has. Clearly. Repeatedly. Authoritatively.
If you believe in an old earth, that is completely understandable. You are absolutely not in any sin. This isn’t a salvation issue. It’s not a test of orthodoxy. Faithful, Bible-believing Christians disagree here. But I want to lay out why I believe a young-earth view is not only biblical-it’s also theologically safer and more coherent.