Well, anything is possible. And I do believe in God the Creator. I have a hard time believeing that He was engaged then in playing a epoch-class practical joke on what would become evolutionists now. 
Fair enough, but isn't it quite possible that an Almighty God capable of creating a Universe, was capable of compressing time, space, and matter to appear as a 4 billion year old Earth as well?
Afterall, if one believes an a God/Creator, material and physical "law" are selectively in force anyway.
Well, anything is possible. And I do believe in God the Creator. I have a hard time believeing that He was engaged then in playing a epoch-class practical joke on what would become evolutionists now.
Certainly. If one accepts the notion of an omnipotent God, one has little choice but to accept that He could have easily done such a thing.
However, there are two issues that come up with this idea. One, we are essentially presented with a young universe that, in all possible respects, appears to be old. As far as we can tell, if it is an illusion, it is a perfect illusion, indistinguishable from a universe that actually is billions of years old. And we might well expect such a seamless, foolproof illusion from a perfect Creator. But if the illusion is completely foolproof, such that we cannot possibly tell if it is really billions of years old, or only appears to be billions of years old, what choice do we really have but to treat it as though it were billions of years old? At worst, what does it hurt to believe our eyes, as God pretty clearly wants us to in this case...
But the second problem may be more serious - the idea that God would perpetrate such a practical joke doesn't really comport with what most people think of God as being likely to do. Think of it like this - if I'm selling you a car, and I roll back the odometer to make the car appear to be a different age than it really is, I am deceiving you, which is very much a sinful act, not to mention criminal. But we're suggesting that God has quite literally done exactly the same thing - perpetrated a fraud by making the universe appear to be a different age than it really is. And if God is A) perfect, and; B) good - perfectly good, in fact - then it's sort of hard to conceive of God committing a wrong and sinful act. Generally, it is proposed by Christian theologists that God is incapable of sin, or at least never does sin, even if He might be capable of it.
So, because it seems to be what He expects us to do - believe our eyes, and trust in the gift of reason that He has given us - and because it lets us avoid the sticky mess of a sinful God, perhaps it's best to accept that the universe and Earth really are billions of years old...