Jesus the Eyewitness to Creation
The New Testament writers referred to Jesus as the Creator who became a man. John 1:3 states, “All things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Colossians 1:16-17, “For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Hebrews 1:2, “God…in these last days has spoken to us in His son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” Jesus as the Creator is our eyewitness as to how He created. That makes Him our ultimate authority on how we should understand the Genesis record from the beginning.
Jesus established the literal historical chronological time line from creation to His second coming when He said in Mark 13:19, “For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the creation which God created , until now, and never shall.” Here Jesus refers to the beginning of time on the first day of creation, which according to the biblical chronology, was approximately 4,000 years before His time. He referred to Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day as literal historical persons, and the establishment of marriage on that same day as a literal historical event in Matthew 19:4-5, “…Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother , and he shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’”
Jesus referred to the fall of Adam and Eve as a literal historical event when He spoke of the devil in John 8:44 as being, “a liar and the father of lies from the beginning, in Genesis 3. He spoke of Abel in Genesis 4 when he was killed by his brother Cain when He said in Matthew 23:35 He reminded us of the “righteous blood of Abel.” He also used Noah out of Genesis 5 and 6 as a historical illustration in Luke 17:27 the flood to show the judgment of God that will come at the end of time. All of these references by Jesus in the book of Genesis show His understanding of the Genesis historical record as a time line from the beginning up to His time on earth. Jesus as our ultimate authority on how to understand the biblical historical record tells us to accept the record just as it has been recorded for us. That means the creation can only be about 6,000 years old.