Rubies Don’t Require Millions Of Year To Form

Rubies Don’t Require Millions Of Year To Form

Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI

Biblical Authority Ministries, March 2, 2026 (Donate)

The True Jewler website states,

“Real rubies are rare, expensive, and take millions of years to form under extreme heat and pressure….Ruby gemstones don’t appear overnight. They take millions of years to form deep inside the Earth….The formation timeline depends on local geology, but generally ranges between 20 and 60 million years….In nature, rubies form under intense heat and pressure over millions of years.”[1]

Growing up, I was repeatedly taught it takes millions of years to form precious gems like rubies. But do they?

Keep in mind that no one has ever observed rubies forming over long ages like millions of years. This is and arbitrary speculation based on the secular worldview. As a biblical creationist, I don’t believe rubies requires millions of years to form.

What Are Rubies?

Rubies are the red variety of corundum, chemically aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) colored by small amounts of chromium (Cr₃+). In nature, rubies form under high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic or magmatic conditions—this includes catastrophic volcanic activity.

Uncut rubies have a deep red luster; Image requested by Bodie Hodge (ChatGPT)

Thanks to modern materials science, researchers have developed several methods to grow rubies rapidly in laboratory environments. These methods rely on controlled heat, pressure, and the right materials to form conditions that promote crystal growth in hours, days, or weeks rather than long age timescales. Let’s take a look at these processes.

Verneuil Process (Flame Fusion)

One of the earliest and fastest techniques is the Verneuil process, also known as flame fusion. It was developed in 1902 by Auguste Verneuil. This method involves feeding finely powdered aluminum oxide mixed with chromium oxide through an oxyhydrogen flame.

The powder melts in the flame and falls onto a rotating support, where the molten droplets accumulate and solidify into a cylindrical crystal mass called a “boule”. Because the material solidifies from the melt in a continuous stream, a large synthetic ruby can be produced in a matter of hours.

Although flame-fusion rubies often contain curved growth lines and occasional gas bubbles (called “porosity” think of a pumice stone that only has an occasion little air-bubble hole), the process remains extremely efficient and cost-effective for both gem and industrial uses.

Czochralski Process

Another rapid method is the Czochralski process, developed by Jan Czochralski in 1916. In this technique, aluminum oxide is melted in a high-temperature crucible at approximately 2050°C.

A small seed crystal is dipped into the molten material and slowly withdrawn while rotating. As it is pulled upward, the crystal grows from the melt in a controlled orientation. Depending on the size desired, high-quality ruby crystals can be produced within hours to several days. This method allows excellent control over crystal structure and purity and is widely used for optical and laser-grade materials.

Flux Growth Method

The flux growth method more closely resembles certain natural crystallization processes. In this approach, aluminum oxide—which is a ruby—is dissolved in a molten flux, which acts as a “solvent” at high temperature. Common fluxes include lead oxide or molybdate-based compounds.

As the solution cools slowly, ruby crystals precipitate out of the melt and grow over time. Although slower than flame fusion, flux-grown rubies can still form within weeks. They often display growth features that more closely resemble natural stones, making them valuable in gemological applications where natural appearance is important.

Hydrothermal Method

The hydrothermal method uses high-temperature, high-pressure aqueous solutions inside sealed autoclaves. Under high pressures—commonly ranging from about 1 to 2 kilobars—and elevated temperatures, aluminum-bearing nutrients dissolve in superheated water.

The solution circulates within the vessel and deposits material onto seed crystals in a cooler region of the chamber. Crystal growth occurs over weeks to months. While not as fast as melt-based techniques, hydrothermal growth is still vastly accelerated compared to the allegation that it takes millions of years to form. And, it can produce high-clarity crystals with fewer structural defects.

Biblical Understanding

From a biblical viewpoint, some rubies were likely formed at creation. Some precious stones are mentioned in Genesis 2, but not rubies. Rubies are mentioned several times in Scriptures, being valuable stones. The Bible refences are (NKJV):

·       Job 28:18  No mention shall be made of coral or quartz, For the price of wisdom is above rubies.

·       Proverbs 3:15  She is more precious than rubies, And all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.

·       Proverbs 8:11  For wisdom is better than rubies, And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her.

·       Proverbs 20:15  There is gold and a multitude of rubies, But the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.

·       Proverbs 31:10  Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.

·       Isaiah 54:12  I will make your pinnacles of rubies, Your gates of crystal, And all your walls of precious stones.

·       Lamentations 4:7  Her Nazirites were brighter than snow And whiter than milk; They were more ruddy in body than rubies, Like sapphire in their appearance.

·       Ezekiel 27:16  “Syria was your merchant because of the abundance of goods you made. They gave you for your wares emeralds, purple, embroidery, fine linen, corals, and rubies.

The Flood of Noah’s day could have easily caused the natural conditions to form precious gemstones like rubies rather quickly. If we consider that at one point the entire land surface area was covered with water (e.g., Genesis 7:19).

This means that there was a significant mountain building phase with tectonic activity and immense volcanic catastrophes occurring at certain phases of the Flood (e.g., Genesis 8:4; Psalm 104:8-9). These conditions with immense heat and pressure are ripe for forming rubies given the correct materials were available.

Rubies are often found in layers associated with metaphoric rock and magma/lava-influenced deposits. Many rubies that are found in magmatic deposits or lava may have been brought up from some of these initially created or Flood-formed rubies—but let’s not neglect that some could have been formed as a result of the catastrophe of specific volcanoes themselves. Albeit, these would be rarer due to certain factors.[2]

Conclusion

These rapid-ruby forming methods that researchers have developed show that ruby crystals can be synthesized quickly when temperature, pressure, and chemical environment are favorable. If the conditions are right, they can form quickly—we know this scientifically.

By optimizing crystal growth conditions, laboratory processes dramatically accelerate crystallization giving us some clues how they can be formed quickly in nature, with heat, pressure and the right materials present.  

Further Reading And References

For more on rapid ruby production from a technical viewpoint please see (yes, one is in French!):

1.     Verneuil, A., “Production artificielle du rubis par fusion.” Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences 138: 732–734, 1904.

2.     Nassau, K., Gems Made by Man. Radnor, PA: Chilton Book Company, 1980.

3.     Nassau, K., The Physics and Chemistry of Color: The Fifteen Causes of Color. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2001.

4.     Brice, J. C., Crystal Growth Processes. Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1986.

5.     Elwell, D., and H. J. Scheel, Crystal Growth from High-Temperature Solutions. London: Academic Press, 1975.

6.     Laudise, R. A., The Growth of Single Crystals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

7.     Scheel, H. J., and T. Fukuda, eds., Crystal Growth Technology. Chichester: Wiley, 2003.

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Bodie Hodge, Ken Ham's son in law, has been an apologist since 1998 helping out in various churches and running an apologetics website. He spent 21 years working at Answers in Genesis as a speaker, writer, and researcher as well as a founding news anchor for Answers News. He was also head of the Oversight Council.  

Bodie launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a personal website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has spoken on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and universities. He is married with four children.

Mr. Hodge earned a Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC). Then he taught at SIUC for a couple of years as a Visiting Instructor teaching all levels of undergraduate engineering and running a materials lab and a CAD lab. He did research on advanced ceramic materials to develop a new method of production of titanium diboride with a grant from Lockheed Martin. He worked as a Test Engineer for Caterpillar, Inc., prior to entering full-time ministry.

His love of science was coupled with a love of history, philosophy, and theology. For about one year of his life, Bodie was editing and updating a theological, historical, and scientific dictionary/encyclopedia for AI use and training. Mr. Hodge has over 25 years of experience in writing, speaking and researching in these fields. 

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[1] Sergey Suhorukov, How Is Ruby Formed? A Look at the Gem’s Geological Journey, TrueJeweler.com, June 8-25, 2025, https://truejeweller.com/how-does-a-ruby-form/.

[2]  From a techie perspective, these factors would include: pressure-temperature paths, isotopic equilibration, regional metamorphic zoning, and mineral chemistry.

 

Defending The Six Days Of Creation

Defending The Six Days Of Creation

Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI

Biblical Authority Ministries, July 11, 2025 (Donate)

The six days of creation are a hot-button of debate ever since the secular humanistic idea of long ages (i.e., millions of years) began to develop in the late 1700s and early 1800s. When many Christians were presented with this false idea, far too many just bought into it!

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of Christians that opposed long ages (e.g., Scriptural geologists). But church leaders in hosts of denominations and church splits entertained the mixing of Christianity with this origins story from the secular side.

They just “synchronized” or “merged” Genesis with long ages and millions of years—which is technically called geological evolution. So why is it “geological” evolution, unlike biological evolution (alleged animal and human evolution as discussed by Darwin for instance).

Image from Presentation Library

Geological Evolution

“Geology” and “Geological” derive from the Greek word “geo” which means earth. Hence, geophyte means soil or ground and geography is the study of the land and political boundaries on earth.

Geology is the study of the rock and rock layers on the earth. So, it has to do with an alleged history of the rocks and rock layers.

Growing up, I was drilled with the idea of long ages and millions of years in the rock layers. It was presumed that it took millions of years to lay down and form all that rock in the rock record.  Slow gradual accumulations supposedly caused the rock and rock layers to form over vast ages. This is what geological evolution is.

Image from Presentation Library 

As a Bible believing Christian, I recognize that most of the rock layers were formed during the global, world-covering Flood of Noah—with some subsequently since then (e.g., volcanoes, local catastrophes, etc.), but most were laid down during the days of the Ark. So, you need to understand that there are distinctly different understandings of the rock layers between those who believe the Bible’s account of the global Flood versus those who hold to geological evolution and its long ages of slow accumulation (technically called “uniformitarianism”).

These are not compatible in any way. If one tries to suggest millions of years and a global Flood, then the Flood would tear up and destroy those previous rock layers and lay down new layers. So, the evidence of alleged long ages would be washed away—literally. Don’t get me wrong, there is the possibility of residuals of creation and early post-Fall (pre-Flood) rock (and possible early rocks layers) that survived and were buried in the Flood, but most would have been utterly destroyed and soil, mud, sediment, and rock would be reformed into new layers.

So What Does This Have To Do With 6 Day Creation?

In the 1800s, when the idea of long ages and millions of years were presented to leading Christians, a number of them simply added it to the Bible. But where do you add millions of years?

You can’t fit it in the genealogies—we have a continuous lineage from Adam to Christ. So, Christians began looking prior to Adam’s creation—hence Creation Week became one of the most controversial chapters in the entire Bible!

Image from Presentation Library

One of the first to mix these religions was Thomas Chalmers. He was a Scottish theologian in the early 1800s, and he inserted these alleged millions of years of rock layers in between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. And so the idea of “gap theory” was invented.

The problem was that Chalmers just didn’t want to address the issue to he crammed all that alleged time and rock layers between the first two verses in the Bible in hopes of not having to deal with it. Of course, this meant that all those rock layers weren’t formed in the Flood of Noah day by this viewpoint—if gap theorists try to follow through with this idea!

Thus, Chalmers just “deleted” all the evidence of the Flood by adopting the secular view of long ages in early Genesis 1! See the total inconsistency of this position? Since Chalmers, variations on gap theory have abounded. With each of these variations, there are plenty of problems with gap theory models—namely death before sin.

After Chalmers, others began inserting long ages into creation week in other ways besides gaps—such as stretching out the days in Genesis 1 (day-age or progressive creation models) or reinterpreting the days in Genesis 1 (framework hypothesis, cosmic temple, etc.).

Some have gone so far as to reinterpret Genesis 1-11 and just replace it with the secular humanistic religious view of big bang, millions of years, and evolution, while retaining that God somehow did it—and then just pick up with Abraham (theistic evolution, evolutionary creation, etc.). All these suffer the problem of death before sin though—which undermines the Gospel.

Image from Presentation Library

But for anyone to propose long ages, they usually have to deal with the days of Creation Week. They must argue that they don’t mean what they clearly mean. Even in gap theory, the first day is extremely long!

The Six Days Of Creation

The six days of creation described in Genesis 1 were ordinary, consecutive, 24-hour days. This understanding is foundational to a biblical worldview and is based on a plain reading of Scripture (e.g., Proverbs 8:8-9, 2 Corinthians 4:2), in accordance with Hebrew grammar, biblical context, and theological considerations—unlike the old earth models of Creation Week.

The Hebrew Word “Yom” (Day)

In Genesis 1, the Hebrew word yom is used for “day.” While yom can have various meanings depending on context (like “time” or “age”). The context reveals yom means and ordinary day and popular lexicons like BDB and HALOT assert this:

• Yom: “day as defined by evening and morning: Genesis 1:5” [Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, 9th Printing, Hendrickson Publishers, 1906, page 398.]
• Yom: “Day of twenty-four hours: Genesis 1:5” [Koehler & Baumgartner, Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Volume 1, Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2001, page 399.]

Whenever yom is used with a number (e.g., one day, second day) and/or with the phrase “evening and morning,” it always refers to a normal-length day elsewhere in the Old Testament.

Genesis 1 uses both ordinal and numerical qualifiers ("one day," "second day," etc.) and “evening and morning” for each of the six creation days. In once instance night is also used (Genesis 1:5). This double clarification makes the intention unmistakable: God is communicating that these were normal days as understood by the original audience. Extensive research has been done on this—particularly by James Stambaugh.

Summary of James Stambaugh’s Research on the Days of Creation

James Stambaugh did an exhaustive study on the Hebrew word yom in context in the Old Testament. He originally published a preliminary journal article on the subject to stimulate debate. Then he finalized it with an ETS paper(Evangelical Theological Society). Most numbers that you see published are from the ETS paper and the finalized results—however, the preliminary journal article is at your fingertips and many can access it freely. But the numbers a don’t quite match from the initial paper and that is why.

Nevertheless, Stambaugh argues that the “days” of Genesis 1 should be understood as literal, consecutive, 24-hour days, based on linguistic, grammatical, and contextual evidence derived via the Hebrew text.

The Meaning of “Yom” (Day)

Stambaugh conducts a detailed lexical study of the Hebrew word yom (“day”) and demonstrated that when yom is used with ordinal or cardinal numbers (one, second, etc.) and the phrase “evening and morning,” it always refers to a normal-length day in Old Testament usage.

Image from Presentation Library 

“Evening and Morning” as Literal Time Indicators

The phrase “evening and morning” is used for each day of creation in Genesis 1. Stambaugh points out that this expression, when used in Scripture, always refers to literal days, reinforcing the plain-sense reading of the text.

Image from Presentation Library 

Image from Presentation Library 

Each day of creation is described with the phrase “and there was evening and there was morning.” argues that this phrase reinforces the idea of a normal 24-hour cycle. “Evening” and “morning” are time markers that define a literal day-night period and were never used metaphorically in this way elsewhere in Scripture.

Image from Presentation Library 

When we look at Creation Week in Genesis 1:1-2:3, it uses these qualifies extensively—as if God was trying to make the point exceptionally clear! 

Image from Presentation Library 

The Pattern Of Six Days of Work, One Day Of Rest

In Exodus 20:11, part of the Ten Commandments, God says:

“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”

Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 state that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. These passages connect the creation week with the human work week, confirming that the days in Genesis were literal and not symbolic.

These passages establish the basis for the human work week—six days of work followed by one day of rest—explicitly modeled after God's activity during creation. This command has no meaning if the days were long ages or symbolic. A literal interpretation is the only reading that makes the commandment coherent.

Genesis as Historical Narrative

Stambaugh also argues that the literary structure and verb forms in Genesis 1 align with Hebrew historical narrative, not poetry or allegory, indicating the author intended to describe actual historical events. Furthermore, Steven Boyd also affirmed the genre of literature was an historical narrative in early Genesis in his work on the RATE project.

The literary style of Genesis 1–11 is historical narrative, not poetry or allegory—of course there are obvious allegories in places in the text intentionally so (e.g., “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh”, etc.). These spots are blatantly easy to spot.

But the historical narrative style is what guides Genesis. This is indicated by the consistent use of Hebrew narrative grammar, including waw-consecutive verb forms (a grammatical feature of narrative). Therefore, the text is meant to be read as a straightforward historical account, not metaphor or myth.

Jesus Affirmed A Young Creation

In passages like Mark 10:6, Jesus says, “But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’” This indicates that humans were created at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after it began, as evolutionary or old-earth views claim. 

This is consistent with a literal six-day creation and a young earth. I wrote and extensive article on this called Jesus Devastates An Old Earth. 

Theological Implications Of A Non-Literal View

If one abandons the literal six-day creation, then it undermines key doctrines, including the origin of sin and death—which is the foundation of the Gospel. If the earth and life evolved over millions of years, then death existed before Adam's sin, which contradicts Genesis 1:29-31, 3; Romans 5:12; Romans 8; (“through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin”); and Revelation 21-22—where our new creation mimics the original creation without death or suffering.

Moreover, accepting long ages implies that God a world full of death, disease, and suffering (as seen in the fossil record) as very good (Genesis 1:31) and perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4), which contradicts God's nature and the goodness of His creation.

Testimony Of Later Bible Writers And Church History Supports Literal Day

Throughout Scripture after Genesis 1-11, Bible authors consistently maintained that Genesis was real, historical narrative. For instance, Peter affirmed the universality of the global Flood (1 Peter 3:20), etc. Paul affirmed that there was a literal Adam and Eve (1 Corinthians 15:45; 2 Corinthians 11:3), and as discussed, Moses further affirmed the six days of Creation Week in Exodus 20 and 31. 

What about 2 Peter 3:8 where God says a day is like a thousand years? I hear this far too often! First, even if one were to attempt to add 1,000 years to each of the creation days, you still don't arrive 13+ billion years. So, it doesn't help the case for alleged billions of years. 

Secondarily, this is in the context of the Lord's patience, not Creation Week. So it is a contextual fallacy to use this for Genesis days. Also, did you realize that the next verse shows the irrelevance of applying it to creation days?  

Images from Presentation Library

Many of the early Church Fathers, reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, and most Christian theologians throughout history believed in six literal creation days. The idea of long ages only arose when 18th- and 19th-century secular-thinking geologists and evolutionists began to reinterpret nature without reference to Scripture.

Re-interpreting Scripture to fit secular models is an easy way to get errant theology and a misunderstanding of history. Instead, we should recognize that God is the authority and thus, Scripture must be the lens through which we interpret the world. 

God Could Create Instantly—But Chose Six Days

I’ve had people ask, if God is all-powerful why couldn’t He created everything instantly? It is not that God doesn’t have that power—of course He does—but the issue why did God take six days and rest on the seventh? And God answers that openly—He did it for us—as a basis for our work week.

There’s no theological or scientific reason to stretch these days into millions of years, and doing so compromises the purpose of the creation account. Let the six days, remain ordinary six days.

Conclusion

The six days of creation are literal, normal-length consecutive 24-hour days based on a straightforward reading of the Bible, particularly the language and grammar of Genesis 1, the structure of the Ten Commandments, and the teachings of Jesus. Reinterpreting the Genesis days leads to theological inconsistencies and undermines the authority of Scripture—and even the Gospel itself.

The Bible—not secular interpretations of history and science—is the final authority. And the Bible clearly teaches that the heavens and the earth were created, formed and filled in six normal days, followed by an instituted literal day of rest.

Bodie Hodge, Ken Ham's son in law, has been an apologist since 1998 helping out in various churches and running an apologetics website. He spent 21 years working at Answers in Genesis as a speaker, writer, and researcher as well as a founding news anchor for Answers News. He was also head of the Oversight Council.  

Bodie launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a personal website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has spoken on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and universities. He is married with four children.