There are two different but connected errors that seriously plague modern Christianity. The first is the common error throughout segments of Christianity, including among Latter-day Saints, that the Earth was created in a single week. I addressed this error and corrected it last week. The second common error is that the world approximately 6,000 to 7,000 years old. That is what this article is about. The idea that the world is only 6,000 years old, an error that has damaged the faith of tens of thousands, even millions, of people, is based on a couple of fundamental misunderstandings of the scriptures. Both have also been refuted by modern revelation starting with the Prophet Joseph Smith. In order to correct this error and demonstrate what the scriptures truly teach on this subject I will combine a proper understanding of scriptural context with modern revelation to establish what it is about the Age of the Earth that the scriptures do teach so that we Latter-day Saints will not continue to fall into the error that other Christians have.
The Age of the Earth
The world is not only 6,000 to 7,000 years old.
This is one is embarrassing to me. At least with the six-day creation error its believers can argue that God is so powerful that He can do anything, including immediately creating everything in a single moment of He wanted to do so, therefore a six-day creation period is at least philosophically possible. They have to go to some ridiculous lengths in order to continue to justify this idea, such as arguing that dinosaurs actually survived for millions of years past their extinction as scientists have discovered and are recorded living side by side with men in the Bible, but at least they can argue that with God all things are possible. Saying the Earth is only 6,000 years old doesn’t have even that to prop it up because there is an abundance of historical, archaeological, and biblical evidence disproving this claim.
Take for example Gobekli Tepe. Gobekli Tepe is the most ancient structure built by human hands that we have discovered. It is located near the borders of the modern nations of Turkey and Syria and is an astounding find. From the way it was built it seems clear that Gobekli Tepe was an ancient temple were prehistoric peoples met to worship God (or the Gods) on a regular basis. By all evidence available, Gobekli Tepe is the very first settlement, the very taproot of human civilization. Built approximately 9,000 BC it is over 11,000 years old. That is 6,000 years before the oldest evidence of writing we have ever discovered. There is more time between Gobekli Tepe and the founding of ancient Sumeria than there is between the ending of ancient Sumeria and us today. This single place is also nearly twice as old as the age of the Earth according to those who think it is 6,000 to 7,000 years old.
Not only is the Earth older than 7,000 years, human civilization is older than 7,000 years old. All the evidence is against the idea that the world is 7,000 years old that it renders anyone who professes this idea incredulous and stupid in the eyes of almost everyone around them. This of course in turn makes their religion, Christianity, look stupid and obviously false as well.
So how did we come to this point?
As aerial view of one section of Gobleki Tepe. 
A closer look at one of the Gobleki Tepe excavation sites. Source
Biblical Evidence?
It essentially boils down to Christians assuming the genealogies of the Old Testament are all 100% complete, perfect, and without error and using the dates and ages given for the people named in these genealogies to construct a timeline back to Adam and Eve and thus to the Creation of the World. The proponents of this have even announced they have discovered the exact week the Earth was created – the week of October 18-24, 4004 B.C. The problems with this methodology should be immediately obvious. Especially for Latter-day Saints. This system is entirely dependent on the idea that the Bible is the perfect Word of God, inerrant without mistake or blemish and everything in it being absolutely literal. But Latter-day Saints know better. The Prophet Joseph Smith himself said:
Upon my return from Amherst Conference, I resumed the translation of the Scriptures. From sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many important points touching the salvation of men, had been taken from the Bible or lost before it was compiled.
…I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors.
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pgs. 9-10, pg. 327
The (unfortunately never completed) Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, the inspired revision of the Bible undertaken by the Prophet Joseph Smith during which he went through and made thousands of alterations to the biblical text, is premised on the fact that the Bible is flawed, mistaken, broken, and full of error. Such a monumental effort wouldn’t need to be undertaken if the Bible wasn’t so completely riddled with scribal mistakes. On this issue, Dr. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill, has written:
Charges of this kind against “heretics”—that they altered the texts of scripture to make them say what they wanted them to mean—are very common among early Christian writers. What is noteworthy, however, is that recent studies have shown that the evidence of our surviving manuscripts points the finger in the opposite direction. Scribes who were associated with the orthodox tradition not infrequently changed their texts, sometimes in order to eliminate the possibility of their “misuse” by Christians affirming heretical beliefs and sometimes to make them more amenable to the doctrines being espoused by Christians of their own persuasion.
…It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the only changes being made were by copyists with a personal stake in the wording of the text. In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another. Scribes could be incompetent: it is important to recall that most of the copyists in the early centuries were not trained to do this kind of work but were simply the literate members of their congregations who were (more or less) able and willing. Even later, starting in the fourth and fifth centuries, when Christian scribes emerged as a professional class within the church, and later still when most manuscripts were copied by monks devoted to this kind of work in monasteries—even then, some scribes were less skilled than others.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, pgs. 53 & 55
The point here is that assuming the Bible is inerrant, without mistake or error, and therefore these ancient genealogies represent both an accurate record of everyone who lived in a family line and their actual ages is a very big conclusion to make without any actual supporting evidence. That in turn leads to all sorts of very seriously erroneous conclusions – like believing the world in only 6,000 years old. There is no evidence from either religious or secular authorities that either these assumptions are correct which calls into question all of their conclusions. There is no evidence for a 6,000 year old Earth in the Bible – no prophet, priest, or teacher teaches it and the biblical text itself is riddled with errors and flaws and therefore the genealogies (which never claim to be complete to start with) are untrustworthy for trying to actually date the age of the Earth. This belief is just one more unbiblical, unscriptural, unauthoritative, false doctrine that Christianity has adopted since the start of The Great Apostasy and which the Restoration has disproven.
What About Doctrine & Covenants 77?
Latter-day Saint readers at this point may say something like, “Okay, there is no proof for either a six-day creation or for the Earth only being 6,000 years old in the Bible, but D&C 77 clearly says the Earth is only 7,000 years!” Is this correct? Let’s look at Doctrine and Covenants 77.
D&C 77 is a series of questions and answers by revelation about what some of the symbolism in the Book of Revelation mean that originated as part of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. The text of D&C 77 follows a question (Q) and answer (A) format. To understand the claim that D&C 77 teaches that the Earth is only 7,000 years old and see if we can see if D&C 77 might teach something different, let us first read the relevant verses:
Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?
A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence.Q. What are we to understand by the seven seals with which it was sealed?
Doctrine and Covenants 77:6-7
A. We are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh.
The first thing to note here is what these verses do and do not actually say. One of the reasons people think this is saying that the world is literally 7,000 years old is because they misunderstand what is being said here. These verses are not explaining what the Lord means when He talks about the age of the Earth. These verses are explaining the symbolism behind the Book of the Seven Seals and the seals upon the book. The usage of the number 7,000 is an additional symbol introduced in D&C 77 that is not explained in the text, possibly because the members of church didn’t ask about it. Perhaps they, like many today, simply took it at face value without asking about the deeper meaning and symbolic nature of the number 7,000. The point here is that D&C 77 explains the symbol of the book and the seals but not the number 7,000. A lot of us assume we might know, but those assumptions are not confirmed by the actual text of the scripture, which means that if we want to justify our interpretation we have to explain why it is valid while others are not.
So our next question should then be, “Did any of the Saints of the era believe the number 7,000 as used in D&C 77 was symbolic or did they all assume it was literal?” While I am positive you can find many example of these numbers being taken literally, it is also worth noting that many Saints saw them as being symbolic. For example, W.W. Phelps, who was one of the most important and influential leaders in early church history and Joseph Smith’s scribe, interpreted D&C 77’s usage of 7,000 highly symbolically to conclude that the Earth was at least 2.5 billion years old. How?
The answer appears to be straightforward. Though 7000 Earth years is in conflict with all physical, chemical, genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence, 7000 years of God is not ruled out. The arithmetic is easy. One day of God is 1000 years of man, and therefore in Joseph Smith’s reckoning, a day of God is 365 × 1000 days of man. The 2.555 billion years in question therefore corresponds to 2,555,000,000/365,000 years of God, which is 7000 years of God for each day of Earth’s existence. A more careful calculation, using the true average length of the year including leap years (365.257 days) gives 2,556,799,000 Earth years. Clearly Joseph Smith did not intend the “7000 years” of Earth’s age to refer to Earth years.
The Scale of Creation In Space And Time by Dr. John S. Lewis
Now W.W. Phelps was wrong in his calculation of the age of the Earth, which we know now to be about 4.5 billion years old, but that isn’t really the point here. The point here is that from the start some of the earliest and most influential leaders in the Church who had a direct relationship to the Prophet Joseph Smith (and perhaps even the Prophet himself as suggested in the paragraph and explained more fully in the source text) understood that the numbers given in D&C 77 were not meant to be taken literally but symbolically. This also shows us that we have no reason to assume that the reference to 7,000 years in D&C 77 is literal and therefore no reason to assert that we “know” the world is only 7,000 years old.
If those closest to the origin of the revelation, perhaps even the Prophet himself, thought the number 7,000 was symbolic and not literal, then we should give that viewpoint serious consideration and see what is revealed by studying the symbolic meaning of the number. Thereby we can better comprehend the message that the Lord is communicating when He is using the number 7,000 in D&C 77. Since Phelps’s method obviously didn’t work, I think we should try and apply what we know about the symbolic meaning of numbers as they are used in the biblical texts, Old and New, to the text of D&C 77. The reason I believe this is because D&C 77 is meant as a guide to answer some questions from Revelation, a biblical book. Therefore the symbolism of D&C 77 is rooted in the symbolism of the Bible. If we understand biblical numerical symbolism then we will better understand Revelation and then we will better understand D&C 77.
Evaluating The Symbolism of 7,000
So, what then are we to understand by this number 7,000?
First, I would note that it is the multiplication of two very important number, the number 7 and the number 1000. 7 times/multiplied by 1,000 equals 1,000 (7×1000 = 1,000.) Why do these numbers matter?
Seven is the number of “spiritual perfection and fullness or completion.” When used in the scriptures the number seven is meant to represent the spiritual perfection of whatever thing it is being related to in the text. For example, the work of Creation takes place over seven days. Above we discussed how the usage of day was symbolic and not literal, the word yom meaning indefinite time period as much as it does literal 24-hour time period. We didn’t discuss how the number of days, seven, was itself symbolic and assuredly not literal. Saying that Creation took seven days is to signify that it was perfectly completed, that however long it took was long enough for God to fully complete the work of Creation. It is not a statement that Creation only took a literal seven days.
In the Book of Revelation we see the number seven repeated very often. For example, there are seven remaining churches, seven letters, seven spirits, seven golden lampstands, seven stars, seven seals, seven horns, seven eyes, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven thunders, a dragon with seven heads, another beast with seven heads, a scarlet beast with seven heads, seven crowns, seven plagues, seven golden bowls, a city built upon seven hills, seven kings, and the book finishes with seven visions in Chapters 20 and 21. In each one of these cases the number seven is symbolic. We all understand that in the Last Days we won’t see a literal seven-headed dragon flying around, a literal seven headed beast rising from the sea, or a literal great whore named Babylon riding around on the back of a literal seven-headed scarlet monster. We understand all these figures are symbolic. Likewise, the seven seals, which D&C 77 says represents the “seven thousand years” of Earth’s existence, are not literal either. They are symbolic, representing the fulness of time that God requires to accomplish His work in history as laid out not only by each seal but as in the Book of Revelation as a whole – the complete destruction of evil and the complete victory of righteousness. Which explains why the number seven is associated with 1,000 as well.
One-thousands is the number of absolute completion. In the ancient mind the number 1,000 operated as much as the number 1,000,000 does today. When I say, “That’ll take a million years,” I do not usually mean that it will literally take a million year to complete such and such a task. Rather I am saying that it will take a long time for that task to be completed. Likewise when ancient peoples used the number 1,000:
The number one thousand (1,000) symbolizes “immensity,” “fullness of quantity” or “multitude.” The number evokes a very long time according to most Bible passages. It is often used in scripture to specify an indefinite quantity. Many early Church fathers saw in the number 1,000, “the totality of the generations and the perfection of the life.” The number sometimes is used in a reference to paradise and everlasting happiness.
…In scripture, the term “thousand,” when in reference to time, is always used symbolically. It represents any predetermined time that God chooses. In other cases, it is always used symbolically for a large number of people or things. For example in Psalms 50:10 we read – “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” Now don’t you think there are more than a thousand hills on earth? Is the passage implying that God does not own the cattle on hill one thousand and one? Of course not. What is being conveyed is that the Lord owns all the cattle on all the hills, not just on a thousand hills.
Emphasis in original
We see therefore that 1,000 is not meant to be understood literally. It is symbolic. The only time the number is used in the Book of Revelation has to do with the binding of Satan. Revelation 20: 1-5 teaches that Satan is bound in the bottomless pit and the martyred Saints rule with Christ for 1,000 years. Then Satan will be loosened upon the Earth one final time. It is from these verses that Christians have developed the doctrine of the Millennium. It also has nothing to do with the seven seals or the history of the world. That only comes in D&C 77. In Revelation 20 though it is clear that the 1,000 year time period is meant to be symbolic. Whether Christ’s rule will literally be 1,000 years long, less than 1,000 years long, or even more than 1,000 years long is not fully explained, nor is it really necessary that it should be. The message isn’t about the exact amount of time Satan will be bound in the bottomless pit or how long the Saints will rule upon the Earth. The message is that God will have all the time He needs to complete His final work upon the Earth and prepare it and humanity for the Final Judgment.
The next question we have to ask is if there is any evidence that numbers were added or multiplied together in order to combine their symbolic meanings as I am proposing with the origin of 7,000 in D&C 77. The answer to this is a resound “Yes!” We see it all the time throughout the scriptures, especially in the visionary experiences of the prophets and a prime example of it comes from the Book of Revelation – the 144,000 of the Tribes of Israel saved up by the angel of the Lord. In his his highly respected Bible commentary, James Coffman explains where we get the number 144,000 and explains its symbolic significance:
Earlier in Revelation we had a number made up of 12 + 12, that of the “four and twenty elders” (Revelation 4:4); but here the “twelve” is multiplied by itself, and then again by a thousand, indicating completeness and perfection in the ultimate degree. What is meant? “That not one of those who are worthy shall be overlooked or forgotten.”[33] It also carries the thought that the natural universe, the powers of evil, and the ravages of time shall not interfere with God’s plans until all are accomplished. Therefore, the 144,000 are a symbol of the total number of the redeemed, a definite number, unknown to us, but surely known by God. It is the same as “the innumerable company” of Revelation 7:9.
See the commentary under verse four.
Here we see twelve (the numerical symbol of the Church and its authority) multiplied by itself to obtain 144 and that multiplied by 1,000 in order to obtain 144,000. (12x12x1000 = 144,000) Thus the 144,000 represents the combined symbolic meanings of twelve and 1,000.
This same insightful process we can apply to the number 7,000 in D&C 77. Combining the symbolic meanings of 7 and 1,000, as outlined above we can understand what the Lord is saying about how old the Earth is and how long it will last. When we do so we discover that the symbolic meaning of 7,000 is that it represents a large enough period of time in which the Lord will be able to complete His perfect plan and purpose for the Earth and mankind. It is not meant to give us a specific age of the Earth but rather to teach us that the Earth has existed and will continue to exist for as long as necessary in order for the Lord to perfectly and absolutely complete His divine purpose in creating the Earth and for His will to be achieved in providing all of us, His children, a place to experience our mortal probations. (Alma 34:32) The world was created as a place where we, His children, could come and live and be tested by mortality so that we can be exalted to become like Him and it will continue to exist until this holy work has been accomplished and it is no longer needed as a mortal testing ground for men and women. Then He will complete the Resurrection, we will face our Final Judgment, and the Earth will be celestialized. (D&C 88:14–26).
Understanding this we can then better understand the symbolism of the seven seals which D&C 77 relates directly to the meaning of the seven seals. Apostle Bruce R. McConkie explained that the six “days” of Creation were not literal days or even periods of the same length and that the six-days described in Genesis 1 were entirely symbolic. Likewise with the seven seals. Each one is not literally 1,000 years and they need not all be the same length. Rather they each represent the different eras of an indefinite time (though likely each was a large amount of time) in Earth history in which the Lord has accomplished part of His work. This understanding aligns perfectly with D&C 77: 6-7, quoted beforehand, as it explains that the seventh seal “contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth” during the seventh time period. What is true of the seventh is true of all. Each “seal” is of an indefinite length during which God forwarded His purposes in the history of and revealed His wisdom and knowledge to mankind so that we all may ultimately have the opportunity to be saved and exalted in the Celestial Kingdom of God.
Final Thoughts
Near the end of his life, after decades of church leadership as the Prophet of God, President Brigham Young is reported to have taught:
In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular. You may take geology, for instance, and it is a true science; not that I would say for a moment that all the conclusions and deductions of its professors are true, but its leading principles are; they are facts—they are eternal; and to assert that the Lord made this earth out of nothing is preposterous and impossible. God never made something out of nothing; it is not in the economy or law by which the worlds were, are, or will exist. There is an eternity before us, and it is full of matter; and if we but understand enough of the Lord and his ways, we would say that he took of this matter and organized this earth from it. How long it has been organized it is not for me to say, and I do not care anything about it.
As for the Bible account of the creation we may say that the Lord gave it to Moses, or rather Moses obtained the history and traditions of the fathers, and from these picked out what he considered necessary, and that account has been handed down from age to age, and we have got it, no matter whether it is correct or not, and whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject. If we understood the process of creation there would be no mystery about it, it would be all reasonable and plain, for there is no mystery except to the ignorant. This we know by what we have learned naturally since we have had a being on the earth. We can now take a hymn book and read its contents; but if we had never learned our letters and knew nothing about type or paper or their uses, and should take up a book and look at it, it would be a great mystery; and still more so would it be to see a person read line after line, and give expression therefrom to the sentiments of himself or others. But this is no mystery to us now, because we have learned our letters, and then learned to place those letters into syllables, the syllables into words, and the words into sentences.
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BRIGHAM YOUNG DELIVERED IN THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, MAY 14, 1871, pg. 116
There are multiple things to love about this account. President Young obviously gives full respect to geology and what the science of geology had revealed about the true age of the Earth. He also recognized that the sources of the biblical texts are not as always pristine, inerrant, and perfectly originating in God as we so often suppose, which in turn means he understood that the Genesis account was untrustworthy as a literal account of the creation and age of the Earth. He concludes with a metaphor about learning to read and how that unlocks the truth hidden within the words of a book. This is a fantastic metaphor to describe how the science of geology has developed and the way it works by discovering the truths hidden within the Earth which can only be truly by those who have learned how to read the information contained therein. His main idea deserves to be read by every Saint – our religion will not clash with science in any particular. (Of course it should be noted that this is is not the same as saying that our religion will not clash with scientism.) The Latter-day Saint will embrace scientific facts as a way to better understand the world that our Heavenly Father has created for His children to live upon and discard any misunderstanding based on outdated philosophical concepts.
This is what we must do. As we learn to read the scriptures, to better understand the language and symbolism within them we can better understand the wisdom and truths within them, the better we can rid ourselves of incomplete and erroneous interpretations of them and come closer to the mind of God. At the same time we must embrace the truths that are discovered by those who are trained to read the evidences of the various scientific fields of study and allow that information to better help us understand the world Our Father has created for us and through which He still enacts His will. True science explains the how of the world and true religion explains the why of the world. As we combine these sources of information we will have a better understanding of how the world works, why it has been created, the manner in which we are supposed to live, and what we can do in order to make this world a better place, and, ultimately, return to be with our Heavenly Father not just as His children but as the Exalted Beings that He wishes to make us into.