“Well, here is another “hypothesis” I came up with when I realized that when the bible is interpreted to say “eternity” or “forever and ever”, a more precise interpretation often is “for the age” or “ages upon ages”. So, I use this analogy: In the art world, sometimes a painting on canvas is covered over with white paint, and another painting applied. And this can happen more than once. So that if you peel away at the corner you can find a painting under the exposed one, and maybe a painting under that one, and a painting under that one.
So, regarding the ages in the bible, we have the period of time between Genesis 1:2 and Genesis 1:3 that could be billions of years and many, many ages. And after the earth is scorched and the new jerusalem comes down afterward in Revelation, there could be many ages to come.
And when we find dinosaur bones, we are literally looking at one of the other “painting” layers on the canvas called “earth”. Our general age began with flooding (”his face over the deep” language, not the “great” flood) and ends in fire, but there could be hundreds of ages that existed before that and hundreds to come. The Cambrian explosion being but one of them. So our age “the current surface condition of the earth” is 7,000 or so years old. But the planet itself is much older and exposes to modern man the leftovers from previous ages when we know where to dig. Again, the bible does not explicitly support this, but it doesn’t seem to contradict it either, and it would explain a lot of what is in the bible. Now we see as through a glass darkly, but then, face to face. There is so much being hidden from us. And thanks to modern discoveries, our imagination starts reeling about who God really is and what he is truly capable of - not from an ancient shepherd’s imagination but from the imagination of those who expose themself to modern science fiction, which is based somewhat on modern science knowledge. The more we know about God, the more we know we don’t know about God. :)”
I do like the analogy of the painting somewhat. Creations that existed but are not seen in the present one unless digging into the old one. I think that the Revelation would more infer though that whatever the painting was at the end, the canvas is stripped clean of the previous ones and a completely new painting is created.
I think that the Revelation would more infer though that whatever the painting was at the end, the canvas is stripped clean of the previous ones and a completely new painting is created.