How old is the earth?

Gramps,

I have a friend who keeps asking me questions about the church, but one I do not know how to answer.. Our church, from my understanding believes the earth to be around 2000 years old, but scientists keep finding bones and what not that are millions of years old.. How do I explain this? Is our earth a recycled plant?

Lynda, from Minnesota

Dear Lynda,

There must be a typo somewhere. Perhaps you meant 6000 years old. That would put the beginning of the earth, according to your understanding, at about 4000 b.c., when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. The Church does not believe that the earth is only that old, but that it was framed in the immemorial past and progressed through untold eons of time, first as a terrestrial sphere, and then after the fall, as a telestial sphere. There is no time line given in the scriptures for the dates of events prior to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from tbe Garden, but neither can we place any credence whatsoever in the dates for prehistoric events postulated by the scientific world. Those dates are all tenuous, based on just the hint of evidence, and they presuppose conditions for the aging of the earth that do not concur with the revealed word. So, perhaps the best way to explain your dilemma to your friend, would be to say that we don’t know how old the earth is, and neither do the scientists. So we must wait for a definite answer for more revelation from on high.

Gramps