A Strontium Clock vs. Biblical Time


British physicists built a laser-cooled clock that uses the oscillations from a single strontium ion to divide a second into more than three million billion parts. They claim that this is the most accurate measurement of time ever made.

The King James Bible contains the word “time” over six hundred times. The translators often render several complex time-words with our one word. Translators even add time-words in various passages that are not in the original because our language expects to place an event “in time.” In ancient Hebrew, when an event occurred is dependent on the context since they did not conjugate verbs into past, present and future. Our thinking is strongly influenced by our language so that everything we do happens “in time.” We use charts with one axis labeled with linear time to record our interpretation of human history. If the ancients could have drawn such a plot, it would look logarithmic, since their earth-history emphasized the “long time” of their ancestors.

When we add up all the generations in the Bible, they only number about six thousand years. To a Westerner, the evidence for an ancient universe, such as the triangulated light from the SN1987a supernova, seems to conflict with biblical earth-history. This would not be the case when the Old Testament was penned, because societies in that age never imagined that time was a linear “thing,” but part of a decaying complexity. Christians unconsciously tailor the text to fit our scientific way of thinking but we should interpret the Bible in its historical context. For example, Moses could not have written a scientific account of creation because such reasoning was not invented until many centuries later.


How then did we begin to think scientifically? It started with an elementary assumption. Peter tells us the first thing (in priority or importance) to know about the last days is their first principle. A first principle is an elementary assumption that must be accepted without proof and is the basis of our world-view. Peter identifies this first principle (arche) as “all things continue as they were in being or relationship.” Our ideas about time, mass, energy and gravity depend on the assumption that matter does not change. We also use this assumption to interpret physical evidence. Scientists write thousands of mathematical papers on the stretching of empty space, a big bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy and other invisible things. If we substituted biblical principles for this assumption, the evidence does not require that our universe contains 99% undetectable things. These non existent things are only invented because this little assumption seriously limits how Westerners think.

The Bible is consistent in the original languages on the subject of time. It lists less than a hundred generations separating Jesus from Adam, but it calls those the LONG AGES. Adam named all the land animals and birds on the sixth creation day. Then, on the same day, he awoke after major surgery to meet his bride. Adam said, “Pa'am bone of my bone . . .” Pa'am means a repetition or recurrence like hoof beats (in our parlance, perhaps the rhythm of a strontium ion). Pa'am is sometimes translated as “time,” “times” or “now” depending on the context. Perhaps Adam meant, “At long last, bone of my bone . . .” How long was the 6th day? According to the Bible, it was a single period of light and dark, yet Adam apparently did years of zoological work during a portion of a single day. The ancients called the earliest people the golden race because they lived long ages without governments.  They freely ate the fruits of the warm earth and "slept away their time." (Ovid)  You say, that is preposterous! I say, it is very difficult to unshackle your mind from your first principle.

Does the Bible have a definition for time? Not formally, but it has words in both Greek and Hebrew that refer to long time. To a Westerner, time is a real thing. We live our lives “in time,” we organize our living with clocks and calendars, and we often say we do not have enough time. The ancients could not run out of time, like a basketball game, because life's activity was time. In some ancient societies, months without agricultural activity didn't even have a name, because time was not separate from what you did.


Solomon mentions several natural cycles in Ecclesiastes and analyzes time in the third chapter. He says time (long time - `owlam) is in our minds so that we cannot understand how beautifully things worked in the past. This suggests that time is not a “real thing” - just our way of comparing things that change or move.


Actually a strontium clock cannot compare a past cycle with a present one without using assumptions that exist only in our minds. Yet the concept of time is very useful for arranging things in order of occurrence and to record history. Does the nature of durations change as the ancients thought? The Bible, in the original languages, seems to hold that durations do change. Paul says our time (kairos - proper time) is short but he also mentions the long ages past. Please notice that about a hundred generations lived in those eons, but several hundred generations have been born since Jesus. Yet the New Testament says we are those "upon whom the ends of the ages have come" - (the conclusion of the eons).


How could long ages fit into a mere six thousand years? Old man Israel explained that the days of his years were short compared to the days of the years of his fathers. In his way of thinking everything was changing. His fathers enjoyed longer days and years than he did. He even showed that his days were longer than ours by driving suckling lambs from the Euphrates to the mountains of Gilead in ten days. It would take several times that long today to duplicate his trip.


Sumerian history emphasized the decaying nature of life in their King List. The scribe apparently translated the earliest generations into the equivalent time during the reign of King Utukhegal of Erech, about the time of Abraham. The tablets list the eight pre diluvial kings as reigning for 241,200 years. However the next twenty-three kings, reigned for a total of 24,510 years, 3 months and 3 1/2 days. Doubtless school children studied this list, since dates were given with reference to the reigning monarch. Many cuneiform tablets show that their earth history was all about changes in life, the earth and even planet shattering collisions in the sky. The pagans preserved short genealogies but longed to have lived during the great time of their ancestors. Hesiod clearly believed that each generation labored harder, lived shorter and even matured faster. Of the last age he wrote, “And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have gray hair on the temples at their birth.”

What would a long day have been like a few hundred generations ago? Why a great forest or a coral reef might visibly grow up in a single warm day. In that case humans would mature very slowly since our biological clocks are synched to the Sun. Hesiod wrote that in that age, a child played at his mother's side until he was a hundred years old. Noah's three sons were apparently recently married, although they were about a hundred years old when the flood came. The Bible says their children were born after the flood. One of the evidences that the earliest generations lived for eons is the thick adult brows that infant skulls do not have. Our brows continue to thicken throughout our lifetime so that if we lived for long eons, we too would look Neanderthal. You say that is a theory that cannot be proved. Yet Job, who lived in the age of dinosaurs, mentions how death took people in his age. “You forever overpower him and he departs; {You} change his appearance and send him away.” (Job 14:22) The word appearance is paniym - face.

You say, it is impossible for a day in antiquity to be long, because then the earth would need to speed up. Speed up in relation to what? If clocks, meter sticks, orbits, the earth and even matter change together, even "constants" like the speed of light would have no meaning. Paul's tells us that everything in the physical universe is decaying, so there are no fixed reference points. He uses the same word, phthora, that Plato used for the decay of matter. Paul says that this changing universe is orderly [hupotasso]. He also illustrates this corruption with things that change together. Things that change as a relationship, change together. If matter is decaying as a relationship, our memory of how much slower life was in our youth would be more accurate than a strontium clock.

The early earth would have been remarkably different from our earth if matter decays as a relationship. Isaiah uses the Hebrew for continuous action when he says the earth and everything on it increases in size. Simple evidences show that the early earth was much smaller than the present globe. It was also populated with giant dinosaurs that would have trouble stretching out their necks if they were alive today. Their tracks show that some of these behemoths could run. The most-distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Fields are compact, dense and spreading out in strings. This fits the Old Testament words that the sky was like bronze beaten out and that God continuously stretches out the heavens. These tiny galaxies are seen ejecting clumps of blue stars as though minimally affected by gravity. The light from these distant galaxies is shifted in comparison to ours, which, if we reject the modern first principle, shows that primordial atoms were in a different stage of decay to local atoms.

A scientist could insist that what they measure guarantees that matter does not change. They cannot even measure atoms without normalizing: substituting mathematical values based on Aristotle's assumption for things they cannot really measure. The whole structure of scientific reasoning rests on this little assumption. Furthermore, this assumption is a taboo subject. Why is it protected at all costs, so that even mentioning it is onerous? Yet history shows that the pagan Greeks, whom we admit founded our system of thinking, debated for generations searching for this same assumption.

You say, we are scientists and we only accept measurements. All right then, consider the measurements of the ancient Babylonians and Mayans. They had remarkably different calendars and mathematical systems. Yet they measured the same synodic period for Venus as we do. However, they both measured a longer period of invisibility behind the sun and fewer days as an evening or morning star. That is what one would expect if the solar system was smaller due to ongoing connected changes.  Time is just our way of counting things that change, however, there is nothing we can compare our "time" measurements to.  If a strontium atom is decaying as a relationship, we could still count its oscillations and think that nothing has changed.  As Augustine wrote, If a day went by in an hour we would still call it a day.  If atoms are not perpetual motion machines, but change in an orderly way as a relationship, counting the dithering of a strontium atom is meaningless. The universe is full of simple evidence that primordial atoms were shifted as a relationship.

Dear Christian. It is not necessary to struggle with mathematical theories. All we have to do is deny a little assumption that Peter says is the first principle of the end time mockers. I understand how hard it is to think about your first principle, but Peter says it is the first thing you need to consider. Is it really preposterous to think about time the way it was understood when the Old Testament was penned? Why did all the ancient societies long for the great time of their ancestors? Why did the ancient astronomers measure such strange things? Isn't it better to believe the people who lived back then, than to lean on our scientific system that never investigates its all important assumption?  The evidence that supports biblical earth history is simple, and non mathematical, once you just get rid of the modern first principle.
 

Can God defeat the wisdom of THIS AGE with their own skills like the Bible predicts? Can He defeat mathematical, scientific and even logical reasoning while providing simple visible evidence that substantiates His Word? He already has, but our first principle grips us like a vise.


Why would God decree that matter decay?


In order that simple faith in Jesus would triumph over the wisdom of the world.


In order that those who believe His word with the simplicity of a child will praise Him forever


In order that those who refuse to believe His word will defeat themselves.


"In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." Luke 10:21.


Think about it.

Copyright Victor McAllister last revision November 26, 2004
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