Creation
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The Gap Theory |
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The
gap theory – also called the ‘ruin-and-reconstruction’ theory - is the idea
that between the first two verses of the Bible (Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2)
there was a gap of time which lasted billions of years during which several
important things occurred. Here is what this theory says: |
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A)
God created the universe billions of years ago. The passage of the Scripture
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1 – NKJV)
refers to that creation. |
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B)
Then the geological ages proposed by evolutionists took place over billions
of years of earth's history. Life-forms arose during that
time that are now preserved in the fossil record, and these fossils
allegedly verify that the geological ages took place. |
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C)
At the end of the geological ages, Satan rebelled in Heaven and many angels
followed him. God then cast Satan down to earth, the earth underwent a huge
disaster or cataclysm, and it was left without form and void, with darkness
on the face of the deep. The passage of the Scripture: “The earth was without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2 – NKJV), refers to
the state of the earth after that great cataclysm, so it should be
translated: ‘The earth became without form, and void.’ That God did not
create the earth without form and void is evident from Isaiah 45:18 which says that God “did not create it in vain.” At this point,
it must be said that some of the adherents of the gap-theory assert that all
the plant, animal and human fossils upon the earth today date from this
cataclysm; so they do not think that the fossil record formed over billions
of years but that it was the outcome of the cataclysm (called ‘Lucifer’s
flood’) which occurred because of Satan’s rebellion. |
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D)
God then re-created the earth in the six literal days of creation described
in the first chapter of Genesis. Therefore there were two creations: the
former took place billions of years ago, while the latter took place after
the earth was destroyed by a devastating global cataclysm which occurred as a
result of the rebellion of Satan and his angels against God, with God casting
them out of heaven to the earth. The six-days of the first chapter of Genesis
are actually days of recreation, for God had to re-create all the animals and
the plants which had been destroyed by that great cataclysm. |
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The
gap theory was developed by Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a notable Scottish
theologian and first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. The most
notably influential 19th century writer to popularize this view was G.H.
Pember, in his book Earth's Earliest
Ages, first published in 1884. The 20th century writer who published the
most academic defence of the gap theory was Arthur C. Custance in his work Without Form and Void. This theory is
upheld by many evangelical theologians. |
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The
Scofield Study Bible notes on Genesis I include the following: ‘The first act
refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all the geologic ages. . . .
The face of the earth bears everywhere the marks of such a catastrophe. There
are not wanting intimations which connect it with a
previous testing and fall of angels. . . . Relegate fossils to the primitive
creation, and no conflict of science with the Genesis cosmogony remains. |
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The
Nelson Study Bible, published in 1997, in its footnotes on Genesis 1:1 and
1:2, says: ‘Here it means that God renewed what was in a chaotic state. God
changed chaos into cosmos, disorder into order, emptiness
into fullness. . . . The two words, without form and void, express one
concept—chaos. The earth had been reduced to this state—it was not the way
God had first created it.’ |
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The
Italian Assemblies of God (ADI, which stands for Assemblee di Dio in Italia)
endorses the gap-theory. In an article written by Francesco Toppi, former
president of ADI, which appeared in 1988 on the fortnightly magazine
‘Cristiani Oggi’ [Christians Today], which is one of the official magazines
published by the above mentioned denomination, we read as follows: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the
surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’
(Genesis 1:1-2 - NIV). Genesis 1:1 ‘In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth’ does not describe the first step of the creation, it does not
refer to the creation of the formless matter out of nothing but to a perfect
creation: “The heavens and the earth” (….) This original physical creation is
complete in itself, like all the things that God creates, even though we
don’t know the details of this first creation (….) Genesis 1:2 would be the
result of a destruction, of a catastrophe and implies a result of an episode
of the ‘protohistory’ of the universe. This first original creation of
Genesis 1:1 was followed by an indeterminate period of time, to which can
correspond all the geological eras of billions of years nowadays settled
through radiometric instruments (….) the great cataclysm that left the earth
“formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep” must have
been an event of cosmic importance and thus it can refer only to the
rebellion of Satan, to his expulsion from heaven and to his fall from heaven
to the earth: (…) therefore Genesis 1:3-31 describes the ‘re-creation’ during
which the Creator reconstructed from the formless matter of the original
creation existing before the adamic creation’ (Cristiani Oggi, 1988, n° 4,
page 2 – Translated by myself). This interpretation ‘allows us to state that
the Bible does not contradict science’ (Ibid., page
2). |
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The
gap-theory is endorsed also by those who follow Herbert Armstrong’s heretical
teachings, for in his book The
Incredible Human Potential he wrote: ‘Now back to Genesis 1:1-2. Verse 1,
as stated above, implies a perfect creation. God is the author of life, of
beauty, of perfection. Satan has brought only darkness, ugliness,
imperfection, violence. Verse 1 shows the creation of a perfect earth, glorious
and beautiful. Verse 2 reveals the result of the sin of the angels. “And the
earth was [became] without form, and void.” The words “without form and void”
are translated from the Hebrew tohu
and bohu. A better translation is
“waste and empty” or “chaotic and in confusion.” The word “was” is elsewhere
in Genesis translated “became,” as in Genesis 19:26. In other words, the
earth, originally created perfect and beautiful, had now become chaotic,
waste, and empty, like our moon, except its surface was covered with water.
David was inspired to reveal how God renewed the face of the earth: “Thou
sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the
earth” (Ps. 104:30). Now another surprise for most readers. Here is another
bit of the missing dimension in knowledge, actually revealed in the Bible,
but unrecognized by religion, by science, and by higher education. From verse
2 of Genesis 1 on, the remainder of this first chapter of the Bible is not describing the original creation
of the earth. But it is describing
a renewing of the face of the earth, after it had become waste and empty as a
result of the sin of the angels. What is described from verse 2 on, in the
supposed “Creation chapter” of the Bible, did occur, according to the Bible,
approximately 6,000 years ago. But that could have been millions or trillions
of years after the actual creation of the earth described in verse 1! I will
comment later on the length of time it might have taken before all earth’s
angels turned to rebellion. The earth had
become waste and empty. God did not create it waste and empty, or in
confusion. God is not the author of confusion (I Cor. |
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Confutation |
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The
gap-theory is a false doctrine, for it contradicts the Word of God, and thus
it must be rejected. |
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The
gap-theory affirms that the things created by God spoken of in the first
chapter of the book of Genesis are things which were re-made or reconstructed
by God, and therefore we should no longer speak of a creation but of a
re-creation or reconstruction. Whereas the Scripture, referring to the events
of the first chapter of Genesis, speaks continually of creation. For after
God rested from His work on the seventh day, the Scripture says: “This is the
history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that
the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4 – NKJV). God
Himself, when He commanded the Israelites to remember the seventh day to keep
it holy, said to them: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD
blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:11). Is it not enough
clear that there were no other creation-days before the six creation-days? If
the first day was not the one described in verse 3 because there had been a
first day billions of years before, why does the Scripture say “so the
evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5), “were the second
day” (1:8), “were the third day” (1:13) and so on? What then would these
expressions mean? Don’t you think that we would implicitly acknowledge that
in the book of Genesis there are some lies, for the first day spoken of in
the first chapter of the book of Genesis actually was not the first day, and
consequently the second day actually was not the second day, and so on? Don’t
you think that if the gap theory were true we should affirm that for many
centuries God deceived all Christians into believing a lie, since the
creation spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis was a reconstruction and
not a creation? |
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Let
us talk about man now. If this theory were true, we should come to the
conclusion that Adam was not the first man: why? Because if “in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth” meant that God made a perfect creation
which afterward was destroyed by the fall of Satan from heaven, that would
mean that at that time God had created also man and woman on the earth since
that creation would have been imperfect without the creation of the human
being. Therefore, before Adam there would have been other human beings on the
earth, that is to say, there would have been other human beings before the
earth became formless and empty. But this is not possible because the
Scripture calls Adam the first man, as Paul says to the Corinthians: “The
first man Adam became a living being” (1 Corinthians |
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How
can we explain then the fact that in the book of Genesis it is written that
the earth was formless and empty (this passage, according to the proponents
of the gap-theory, supports their thesis)? We explain it in this way: when
God created the earth it did not have the form it has now, but it was
formless. Therefore the earth did not become formless but at the beginning of
the creation it was made formless by God and afterward God formed it. For you
should keep in mind that at the beginning the continents were not visible as
they are now because they were submerged (underwater) as it is written that
on the third day God said: “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so” (Genesis
1:9). And the words of the Psalmist are in agreement with this, as it is
written: “You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood
above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled; at the voice of Your thunder
they hastened away. They went up over the mountains; they went down into the
valleys, to the place which You founded for them” (Psalm 104:6-8 - NKJV).
Therefore when we read that at the beginning the earth was formless we have
to bear in mind that the earth had not yet risen out of water, in that it
rose out of water on the third day as Peter says: “By God’s word the heavens
existed and the earth was formed out of water and with water” - 2 Peter 3:5
NIV). Furthermore, the earth was empty because we know that the plants, the
animals and man, were made by God on the third day (plants) and on the sixth
day (animals and man). That’s why the Scripture states that the earth was
empty and not only formless. Therefore we must not be surprised to read that
the earth was empty. |
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We
can say a similar thing also about man, because man did not take immediately
the form he has now because the Scripture says that “the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). The expression ‘the Lord God formed
man’ implies that at the beginning he was formless and afterward he took the
form that God had determined (we don’t know how long the formation of man
lasted, anyway it took place during a day of 24 hours, I mean it might have
lasted 5 seconds or 5 minutes or 15 minutes or 1 hour or 2 hours, etc.; we
can say that the formation of man took place between the morning and the
evening of the sixth day). That’s not a strange thing because even the baby
who is going to be born, before taking the form he will have when his mother
gives birth to him, at the beginning was formless and has undergone a process
of formation which in this case lasted several months. When David said: “Your
eyes saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:16 - NIV) did he not mean that at the
beginning his body was unformed (or shapeless)? Please note that everything
is the work of God because David said to God: “For you created my inmost
being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 – NIV) and Job
said: “Your hands shaped me and made me” (Job 10:8 – NIV). However, when the
hands of God began to form man he was not only shapeless but also empty
because there was no life in him. It was when God finished forming his body
that He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living
soul (Genesis 2:7). Therefore, that’s the way God worked, but unfortunately His
way of working things, so clearly described in the Scripture, has been
darkened by the above theory, which is nothing but an idea that sprang from a
wrong interpretation given to the words “was formless and empty”. However, it
is an idea that not only contradicts the teaching of the Scripture concerning
the creation, but also builds a sort of bridge between science and the book
of Genesis because somehow it confirms that the geological eras of the
scientists – which we don’t accept at all – actually can be placed in the
book of Genesis. In other words, this theory sprang from the need to
reconcile science and Scripture. And the damage caused by it is evident. Know
this, brothers, that many believers, wanting to
reconcile the untrue theories of science with the truth of the Scripture,
have wandered from the truth! |
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Last
of all, let me say a few words about fossils. How do
we explain the presence of so many animal fossils in the earth’s crust? Well,
their presence can be best explained as one of the results of the worldwide
flood which occurred in the days of Noah, for according to the Bible when God
brought the flood upon the earth to punish the world for its iniquity He put
to death all animals and men (except Noah, his family, and all the animals
that were with him in the ark), as it is written: “All flesh died that moved
on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that
creeps on the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of
the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died” (Genesis |