Why Did God Wait So Long?

Question: If the far reaches of the heavens are 13 billion light years away and the earth is only 4.5 billion years old, why would God want to wait such a long time before creating the earth? And then wait another enormous amount of time before man appeared on the earth?

Answer: Okay, Scripture tells us that “God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) notice that the heavens came first then the earth. That also rings true to most people. We have begun to pick up light that has travelled to us from galaxies 13.2 billion light years away. As science advances and techniques become more refined, the estimated age of the heavens gets more precise. The age of the earth is younger: 4.5 billion years. one question that springs to our minds straight away is, “Why would God want to wait such a long time before creating the earth?” But then we ought check ourselves for thinking that God is man. It seems a long time to me, but God is outside of space-time because he made it. Also, there could be many hidden factors in creating a universe that I'm not aware of, factors that space and time manufacture. That's why there's the "time" element in space and time.

Secondly, and most importantly, where there’s size there’s time. as soon as a space is created then the possibility exists for an object to travel from one side of the space to the other, and travelling takes time. Hence space and time is now called space-time—it’s one thing. God made this “one thing.” if it has size then it has time, you can’t have the one without the other. When we say the universe is big, we mean it has lots of time. 

Think of a graph, and place “time” and “space” at right angles to each other. (The technical term is orthogonal.) north and east are also at right angles to each other—you can travel north, but this does not affect where you are in terms of east or west, and you can travel east without getting closer to north or south. in a similar way you can travel through time without it affecting where you are in space—by sitting still. you can also travel through space without affecting where you are in time—if you travel fast enough. Keep the right-angle graph in mind and call the graph “space-time.” space-time is one thing. We cannot say the universe is big without saying it has a lot of time. if the universe were young we would see that because it wouldn’t be nearly as big as it is now. We cannot have space without time attached to it—any more than we can have north and south without having east and west attached to them. 

Now this next bit is hard for us to grasp, because we are in spacetime at the moment. But think of spacetime as one big block - from beginning to end - God created it, the "time" as well as the "space". When we think of it like that we can see that God placed us into this big block. That's why he helps us to understand it saying, "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done" (Isaiah 46:10).

God is able to see all points at once, so in that sense, he doesn't have to wait billions of years for something to happen. 

The reason that God explains his ability to declare the end from the beginning is because in some sense we are able to grasp it, because we are made in his image. So he explains it to us in various ways: "His glory is above the heavens. Who is like the LORD our God, Who is enthroned on high, Who looks far down to the heavens and the earth?" (Ps 113:4-6).

"A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night" (Ps 90:4).

God’s Spirit breathed upon Homo sapiens and self-awareness dawned upon humanity, enabling humans to be aware of the spacetime in which they resided—a capability to slice through the framework they inhabited. A human was able to work within nature and also be able to coexist with super-nature. Animals are a part of the fabric of nature and therefore unable to disentangle themselves from it. Human beings, however, have both nature and super-nature and are able to view both aspects. Biology and spirituality belong to human beings but animals have only biology. 

"God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).