by Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

Young-earth creationists believe that physical death did not occur anywhere in God's creation until after Adam's fall. I discuss my perspective and respond more fully to this belief in the book, Creation and Time (Colorado Springs, Cob.: NavPress, 1994), pages 60-69. Below is a brief overview of this issue. Most young-earth creationists recognize that it is impossible to prevent, before the fall, the death of at least some plants and animals. After all, some animal species cannot live for even a few hours without consuming plants or other animals. Moreover, it would be difficult for elephants to avoid crushing an ant or two or for cows and baboons not to swat an occasional mosquito. How such creationists deal with this problem is to claim that the Bible's definition of life extends only to the higher animals. Specifically, they would state the Bible assigns the capacity to live and to die only to the birds and mammals (and, depending on the young-earth creationist in question, possibly a few other creatures like reptiles and amphibians). But this claim is not true. Many Bible verses assign the capacity to live and to die to plants and lower animals. A few of these verses are listed below:

• Let the waters teem with living creatures. -Gen. 1:20
• The fish in the Nile will die. -Ex. 7:18
• Entreat the Lord your God that He may take away from me this death [of plants by the plague of locusts]. -Ex. 10:17
• The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards, and in the fields. -Ex. 8:13
• Its stump [a tree's] may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud... But man dies and is laid away. -Job 14:8-10
• Like green plants they will soon die away. -Ps. 37:2
• He killed their fish. -Ps. 105:29
• Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.-Prov. 30:25
• Locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks.-Prov. 30:27
• A lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.-Prov. 30:28
• Dead flies give perfume a bad smell. -Eccl. 10:1
• Their fish... die of thirst. -Isa. 50:2
• See how the lilies of the field grow... which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace. -Matt. 6:28, 30

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