Lifting Eyes Unto the Hills

“He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.” –Ps. 104:5

I walked among the mountains of the U.S. and Canadian Rockies this summer, and it troubled my mind as much as it soothed my spirit. I stood on varied colored sedimentary rock that once sat under ancient seas. I was told they were millions of years old and were slowly laid down layer upon layer under alternating shallow and deep oceans. I could see where there were cracks in one layer where the silt had dried under a hot sun and split open into a spider web pattern. These were then subsequently filled in with other material leaving a graphic picture of prehistoric dried mud. Then these sea beds were thrust upwards thousands of feet forming the purple mountain majesties we find so captivating. Following that, the glaciers went to work carving out the valleys and lakes. This, of course, took another few million years. And in the process, we were given a dramatic cross cut view of the mountain itself with its undulating layers pushed up at odd angles. Each layer represented another eon of time for natural processes to complete their work.

Or did it? Old earth, new earth? Which is it? Is the earth billions of years old with its story undeniably written and recorded in rock and stone? It will be one of my first questions when arriving in heaven. I really would like to know. Of course, once there, our questions which we hold so dear will probably seem quite trivial. I still can’t help but ponder this question of earth age. It compelled me to try to reconcile this with Scripture.

I went not to Genesis but to the Psalms to read of God’s hand in creation. In the poetic I hoped to find clues to the graphic. Poetry reaches beyond the concrete and portrays reality in a way that plain narrative cannot. There I found that God was “the one who by his strength established the mountains” (Ps. 65:6). I saw a picture of great convulsions in nature in Ps. 77 where the earth trembled and shook as God moved through the sea following a path through the great waters. Ps. 95 talks of the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains, and all the seas as being in His hands as He formed the dry land. Ps. 97 tells us that the earth trembles before the Lord and that the mountains melt like wax before His presence. But most graphically, Ps. 104 describes the processes of creation where messengers of wind and fire were involved in setting the earth on its foundation so that it should never be moved. Waters covered the earth as a garment and stood above the mountains. At God’s rebuke the waters fled, the mountains rose, and the valleys sank down to the place He appointed for them. It all sounds very cataclysmic over a much shorter period of time.

And why mountains? They are pretty to look at but nothing can grow on them nor can anyone live there. Did God put them there for pure variety’s sake? I was thrilled to learn that they have a very real purpose. As I stood on a glacier of 1,000 feet thick ice beneath my feet, I learned that 75% of the world’s fresh water comes from glacial run off. The mountains serve a life-giving function in capturing and storing up the winter snows, compacting them to ice, and then slowly releasing them to water the earth. Even the atheist is compelled to admit that the earth seems to be ideally suited to sustain human life. Almost by design. Imagine that. And the mountains have their place in this grand scheme.

As to their age, that mystery is still not known. But I do know that it is the glory of God to conceal a matter (Pro. 25:2). And in His wisdom He has decreed that the just shall live by faith during our sojourn on this earth. I reserve the right to hold the processes of "millions of years" with some serious suspicion. God the creator has veiled his presence from us, to keep us walking by faith and not by sight. And in creation, He has covered His own tracks quite well. He might even be just a bit downright "unscrupulous" in leaving a trail of evidence that would disguise his hand in all of this. The secular scientist has no way of admitting to the agency of a God who can touch the mountains and make them smoke. He can only theorize natural causes. He believes only what he can see. We believe so that we can see.

The unbeliever looks and proudly assures himself that this is a self-made universe so he can declare himself the resident in-charge landlord and sole proprietor. At the bottom, this is nothing more than your garden-variety mutiny in the vineyard (Luke 20) dressed up in the white smock of a learned geologist.

Mercy and Truth,
Mr. Moe