I recently fielded a question about a debate between Hugh Ross and Kent Hovind. While they are both "creationists", they come from vastly different perspectives. In my opinion, Ross clearly made the better case and was more rational than Hovind. The question asked if they could both actually be right about the length of the creation days, 6000 years (Hovind) and millions/billions of years (Ross). Let me explain why I don’t think that is truly the case.
It seems that Kent teaches that the Genesis account can only be viewed as meaning that the earth was created in six 24-hour earth days and that the earth is three days older than the rest of the celestial bodies (based on his creation day 4 interpretation). Since these 24-hour days are measured from the perspective of the earth, then it comes into direct conflict with measurements made of the age of the earth/universe and its history. Note: I don’t understand him to be saying that the six days were measured by God’s timeframe, but rather in ours. This is typical of the young earth creationist (YEC) viewpoint.
As far as other dimensions, here is my understanding: The Bible clearly teaches that people have both a physical nature, as well as an immaterial one. The terms soul and spirit are often used interchangeably, and even if there is some distinction, the Bible is not clear on what that difference is. Sometimes "soulishness" is applied to animals like birds and mammals, indicating that they have mind, will, and emotions, but not a spiritual nature. Clearly, there is a physical universe created by God, as well as a spiritual dwelling place (or places), also created by God, where the angels interact, heaven exists, etc. We really don’t have information on how the dimensions of the spiritual realms are structured, but we infer that God can access more dimensions than we have access to, based on His attributes as described in the Bible. It should also be noted that before God created the space-time dimensions that we live in, He and His other creations (angels) were able to interact and events took place.
We need to avoid the temptation to make equations out of scripture verses. Take the following scriptures as examples. Moses’ Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” And Peter states in 2 Pet. 3:8, “… With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” The word “like” indicates that these are not meant to be exact equations, but rather express the fact that God’s perspective is not the same as ours. [If so, they would then be contradictory with something like 1*d=1000*y and 1000*365*d = (1/365)*y!] In fact, God is the author of time itself! The point of view in Genesis, with the Holy Spirit hovering over the surface of early earth, seems to allow some leeway in understanding the length of the days and from whose perspective the days are being described. The Hebrew word for day (yôm) is flexible in usage like ours and has several different possible meanings, based on context. It is an entirely permissible interpretation of scripture to view the Genesis days as long periods of time. In fact, this interpretation allows compatibility with God’s General Revelation in the record of nature. The YEC position places these two revelations in conflict with each other.
Obviously Kent Hovind comes from the YEC camp. In general, I’d be a little careful about embracing Kent Hovind’s viewpoints without a lot of verification. He has said some pretty wild and conspiratorial things before, so be sure to check things out before using them. For instance, there is no valid evidence for man and dinosaurs coexisting on the earth at the same time, but he makes that claim. He even disagreed vehemently with Answers in Genesis’ “Arguments that creationists should not use” document, and continues to use discredited examples in his presentations.
For further study, I’d highly recommend several of Hugh Ross’ books –
I also found these links on the Reasons to Believe website (www.reasons.org) that you might find interesting:
http://www.reasons.org/creation-timeline
http://www.reasons.org/what%E2%80%99s-all-higher-dimensionality-stuff-part-4-7 (this is just part 4 of 7)