Question: Why couldn't animals have died before Adam and Eve sinned? | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Question: You object to the idea that there was death, even of animals, prior to Adam’s sin. Yet the scripture says “...by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans:5:12). Death passed upon all men. Animals are not mentioned and certainly don’t sin. What would preclude animals from dying prior to the fall? If creation took six literal 24-hour days, and Peter said, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter:3:8), this seems to indicate that God’s idea of a day can include much more than 24 hours.

Response: The words “day, day’s, days’, and days” are used thousands of times in the Bible. How can you say that Peter was referring only to the “days” in Genesis 1? If that were the case, how can you change his “thousand years” to billions of years in order to accommodate the pseudo-scientific evolutionary process? It cannot be justified from Scripture. This is eisegesis, not exegesis. Had secular scientists not come up with this idea, no one reading the Bible ever would have! Why did they do this? Because evolution requires billions of years! This is an evolutionary theory, not a biblical one.

Fifteen-hundred years before Peter, Moses had said: “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night” (Psalm:90:4). Was Peter contradicting Moses? How long is a thousand years with the Lord—a day, or a watch in the night? It can’t be both. Neither Moses nor Peter said that a day equaled a thousand years with God—and they certainly didn’t declare that the six days of creation actually covered billions of years! Both of these spokespersons of the Holy Spirit are simply pointing out that God dwells outside of time and that what seems like a long, long time to us is nothing with Him. One cannot read any more than this into these two passages.

As for animals dying before Adam’s sin that brought God’s judgment of death upon the entire creation, God had pronounced everything He had created as “very good” (Genesis:1:31). It isn’t reasonable that He would call animals fighting and eating one another and dying “very good.” You are correct that Romans:5:12 doesn’t mention animals. But Romans:8:19-20 clearly states that all creation shared in the curse pronounced upon Adam for his sin and will be delivered from that curse upon “the manifestation of the sons of God” at the resurrection of the redeemed.