A Person's Age - Is A Birth Certificate The Final Authority?


by Thomas Fortenberry - Date: 2007-01-07 - Word Count: 1361 Share This!

It is an anomaly to say that Jesus is as old as His Father and older than His mother. However, as unreasonable as these two claims appear to be, they are actually true since He is God.

On the other hand, the human body He received through the virgin Mary was both younger than His heavenly Father and younger than His earthly mother or was it? Is it possible that there is a sense in which even part of this statement can be called into question? There are facts which support the concept that there are at least two senses in which we of the human race are much older than we ordinarily consider ourselves to be. I have found when speaking about these truths that many people are both surprised and fascinated by them.

When introducing this subject in lecture format, I begin by stating that I'm actually much older than I look. I tell my audience that I'm well over one hundred years old, although I'm only sixty-four based on my birth certificate as I write this article. This subject requires that it be understood what the Bible means in the book of Genesis when it states that after God created everything He rested on the seventh day. The word rested doesn't mean He was tired and needed to rest. The word is used in Genesis in the same sense it is used in court rooms today when the attorneys rest their case. It means God stopped creating things because He had made everything He intended to make.

So far as we know, God hasn't created anything since the day He rested. This means that all that is in existence today is made up of atoms which are as old as the Universe -- this, of course, includes our bodies in which we live. As you the reader probably know, there are numerous conflicting schools of thought on the subject of the age of the Universe each of which is usually tenaciously defended by its proponents. The gamut of the ages assigned to the Universe by scientists, individuals, religious groups, and various other organizations varies widely from a few thousand to a few billion years. I happen to be among those who believe the Universe is very young -- perhaps somewhere between six thousand and ten thousand years old.

Even if the Universe is only a mere few thousand years old it is still incredible that the atoms which make up the molecules which make up the compounds which make up everything we see as well as the gases and microscopic things we can't see are at least thousands of years old. In my lecture, I tell what is obviously a fictitious story as though it is true. I make the preposterous claim that one of the atoms in my fore finger happens to be an atom that was at one time part of one of the hairs on the head of the well known prophet Moses of the Old Testament.

I explain that a few decades ago someone planted a fig tree orchard above the grave of Moses and the roots of one of those trees happened to find their way to the place where Moses was buried. They then absorbed some of the atoms that once were part of the body of Moses. Some of those atoms, I surmise, became part of some of the figs on that tree. I then tell how those figs happened to be among many hundreds of bushels of figs that were shipped to America where they were used in the production of a well known brand of cookies named Fig Newtons. They were then transported to my town and placed on a shelf at the local Kroger store where I shop for my groceries. By chance I bought the package of Fig Newtons which contained one of the atoms that came from Moses' body and when I ate the cookie in which it happened to be, that atom became part of the fore finger on my right hand.

While my story, to say the least, lacks adequate corroboration, it's a scenario which really could happen even though the chances are astronomically small. The atoms in our bodies, as everyone knows, come from the food we eat and the food we eat comes from atoms in the soil where our food is grown and those atoms come from different kinds of fertilizers and decayed matter of all kinds which come from other sources -- a dynamic process which is endless. Thus the atoms in our world are constantly being recycled.

The bottom line of all of this is that our bodies are composed of atoms which are as old as the Universe. Thus, though we may have been born only a few years or decades ago, the atoms of which our bodies are composed are as old as the Universe. Each atom, therefore, in our bodies are at the very least many thousands of years old and thus in that sense our bodies are also at least many thousands of years old.

The above facts mean that at any given point in time all the atoms in the Universe are exactly the same age. Therefore, a grandson's body is composed of atoms that are the same age as the atoms which compose his grandfather's body. The grandfather and the grandson undeniably, in that sense at least, are the same age if the biblical account of creation is true.

There is, however, another sense in which we are yet far older than a mere few thousand years or even a mere few billion years. Now before you call for the people dressed in white with the straight jackets to haul me away, allow me to explain how this is also an incredible reality.

One of the spectacular characteristics of God is that He is omniscient. Should you not be familiar with this word, it means all-knowing, that is, God knows everything there is to know. To restate this for emphasis, this simply means there is nothing which is unknown to God. The Bible is actually being very modest when it declares that God knows how many hairs there are on the head of every human being. He also knows how many atoms are used to make up the composition of each of those hairs. He further knows how many electrons are in each of those atoms and how many protons and neutrons are in the nucleus of each of those atoms.

As insignificant as a sparrow is, the Bible says that not one falls from the sky without God knowing about it. My former late pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers, often said that not one blade of grass moves without God's permission. The above definition of the omniscience of God may further be expanded to encompass the fact that everything God knows has been known by Him for as long as He has been God.

Since God had no beginning, what He knows now has been known by Him for all eternity past. He knows you, He knows me, and He knows everyone else who ever has or ever shall live. Therefore, you and I and everyone else have been in His heart and mind from eternity past and we will continue to be in His heart and mind throughout the eternal future.

What we would look like, when and where and into whose family we would eventually be born has always been in the mind of God. Every word we would speak from birth to death, every thought we would have and everything we would do, God has always known. Therefore, since the knowledge of every second of our lives has always existed in the heart and mind of God, we have to that extent and degree always existed ourselves. Each of us has in that sense been in existence for as long as God.

Consequently, when someone is so bold as to ask you how old you are, you might enjoy seeing the confusion and disbelief that comes over their face when you tell them that there is a sense in which you're older than the Universe - that, in fact, you are in a sense as old as God.


Related Tags: anti aging, aging, old, age, old people, aging process, aging with grace, old man, old women, old men

The author has a BA degree in Bible and has been a student of the Bible for about fifty years. He may be contacted through his website: http://ChristianityThatWorks.com/.

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