What is the Gap Creationism Theory? (Genesis 1:2) | Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv
– Okay, so here we are Genesis, The Foundation Book of the Bible. This is lesson number five. The title of this lesson
is The Day-Age Theory. The Day-Age Theory. All right, in our last session, we talked about the age of the Earth because whenever you do Genesis obviously and you begin Genesis, you’re
talking about the creation, that issue always comes
up, how old is the Earth? And we said there were
only two theories to choose from if you wish.
The first one is the Old Earth Theory. We talked about that last
week, the Old Earth Theory. And the Old Earth Theory says
well the Earth, the universe, millions and billions of years, millions and billions of years, and the idea in the Old Earth Theory is that matter itself is eternal. It’s eternal, it always was. Or it created itself billions
and billions of years ago and through the process of evolution or the universe and the Earth
has become what it is today. I mean, that’s the short form, but, all the scientists
that believe in evolution, they write books and PhDs
and so on, when you boil it all down,
that’s their theory.
Matter always was or it created itself and through time and chance, it is what it is today. That’s pretty much what it is. And one of the proofs that they offer for this particular model
is the fossil record. We showed some pictures last
time, the geological record, and they say, “Well, when you
look at the fossil record, “down at the bottom you
see a simple creature “and then at the top, the
layers throughout history, “at the top, you have complex creatures “and that is what proves it. “Complex most recent, “simple further back millions
and billions of years ago.” And of course, we said there were problems with the Old Earth model. One of the problems is
a theoretical problem or a philosophical problem and the theoretical or
philosophical problem with the Old Earth Theory is that, well, it’s the eternity of matter problem.
In any other branch of science, nobody will stake their reputation on the idea that matter is eternal, or that something comes from nothing. In no other branch of
science will anybody say something comes from nothing, except when it comes to proving evolution. That’s the basis so you’ve
got a theoretical problem. No matter how much proof
they deposit, the basis of their theory is
that matter always existed and evolved to be what it is today. Another problem is the geological findings also contradict their theory. It’d be nice and neat if you
looked at the geological table not on a picture, but at what
exists on the Earth. It’d be nice if you could
buzz saw a thousand feet down and look at the geological record and see that it pans out
that way but it doesn’t.
When you do it, what
happens, what you find out is there are complex creatures
at the bottom, fossils, and there are complex creatures at the top and every layer in between. And we talked about that last week. I’m not gonna go through that again. So, that’s the Old Earth Theory and some of the problems
with the Old Earth Theory. And then the other theory of
course is the New Earth Theory or Young Earth sometimes,
5,000 to 10,000 years old. The idea is that the Earth, the universe, the Earth is just five days
older than the man himself. And the New Earth model says
that an all-powerful being, whom we call God, created
the universe and the Earth at the beginning of time roughly
5,000 to 10,000 years ago. Now, there are a couple of proofs, the proofs used for this particular model, and the philosophical arguments. The philosophical argument says, “Well, how do you know there’s a God?” Well, think back now. For every effect, there’s a cause, right? So, what is the first cause? Where does matter come from? It doesn’t just come out of nothing. It’s more logical to think that a supreme being created matter than to think that matter
just created itself.
Philosophically, it’s much more believable to accept the idea that a higher being created the lower being than that the lower being simply materialized out of thin air. Also, we have another type of
argument, the moral argument. In other words, people have
a sense of right and wrong. Where does that come from? Rocks don’t have a sense
of right and wrong. Where did humans get the
sense of what is right and what is wrong? Actually, not so much what
is right and what is wrong, but what we ought to do. In every society, no
matter what society it is, people have a sense of
what they ought to do, even people who don’t believe in religion have a sense of what they ought to do.
You ought not to beat up
your mother in every society. Beating up your
mother is frowned upon. Where does that come from? Where does that sense of ought to come from if we just come from inanimate objects? The strongest arguments nowadays are the elements of design. If there’s design, then
there has to be a designer. And the more they explore
the microcosmic world, the world we can’t see, the more they find out that
matter is extremely complex, more so than they ever imagined, and so the idea is that if
there’s complexity and order, there has to be a designer. The more complex, the greater
the designer needs to be. Again, those are philosophical
arguments that we have to base our beliefs in. Also, the Young Earth idea matches the archeological
and geological findings.
The Young Earth idea says that everything was created at once and so when you find a mixture of complex and simple organisms and fossil records, well yeah that matches with
the Young Earth theory. And then of course we have
the idea of revelation. Revelation is not a
the scientific thing obviously, but the Bible gives us information that we can’t know through logic, we can’t know through observation. The Bible gives us that. And I’ll tell you personally for me, it’s not so much in the Book of Genesis, but it’s in the Book of Hebrews that I go for the faith issue, the revelation issue, where the writer says in Hebrews 11:3, “by faith we understand that
the worlds were prepared “by the word of God so that what is seen “was not out of things which were made, “were not made out of
things which are visible.” I’ll read it again.
“By faith, we understand that
the worlds were prepared “by the word of God so that what is seen “was not made out of
things which are visible.” Notice it doesn’t say that
something comes out of nothing. The writer doesn’t say
something comes out of nothing. He says that something comes
out of things not seen. Not the same thing. And so in the New Testament, the Bible looks back at Genesis and says, “We accept something that
we can’t mechanically… “We haven’t seen,” and it’s one of those things
that we accept by faith. Well, I’ll give you another
thing that I accept by faith. In the Bible, it says when I’m baptized, I receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in me. Well, I don’t understand
the mechanics, okay, of how a Spirit Being,
God, the Spirit Being, somehow dwells inside of me.
Is He just inside my psyche or my brain? Is He all in the body? I don’t understand the
mechanics of how that is done, but I’m not asked to
explain how it’s done. I’m simply asked to
believe that it is done. Just like when you’re baptized, right? It says your sins are forgiven. Do you see your sins
floating around in the water? No, you believe it
because the word tells you this is what happens and
you accept it by faith. All right, so some of the
things that we accept, are the Young Earth model
because this is the one given to us in Genesis and it’s the book that
we’re presently studying. Now, there are some, however, who try to combine the biblical account of the evolutionary model and the theories that they come up with and that’s the subject
of our lesson today.
And we’re gonna talk about the Gap, this thing called the Gap Theory. This is the theory that tries to marry evolution and scripture. This theory asserts that
there is a tremendous time gap allowed for between
Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 and the Gap Theory run like this. First of all, the Gap Theory says that
God created the world, all of it, in Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God
created heaven and Earth. Okay, that means that everything
was done, Genesis 1:1. Then the Gap Theory says that
Satan rebelled against God and for this reason, there
was a tremendous cataclysm that destroyed the world
and left it void and blank. So, this idea here would explain the billions of years of
fossils piling up in the rock and the aging of the Earth to accommodate such ancient fossils.
Verse two would be the verse
that would describe the Earth in the aftermath of the great
destruction of the Earth. And then the third part
of the Gap, Theory says that then God recreated the
Earth in six literal days as it is described in verses three to 31. See what I’m saying here? So, God creates everything fully created, then there are the angels
rebel and there’s a rebellion and there’s a cataclysmic
destruction of the Earth and the animals on it
and so on and all the fossils that you
see were created at that time because a day is like
a thousand years to God and so billions of years went by and then Genesis 1:2
begins to tell the story of how God recreated the Earth, okay.
Now, this theory is also known as the ruin and reconstruction theory. It’s also been called the
pre-Adamic cataclysmic theory. And it was first proposed by a man called Thomas
Chalmers in the 19th Century was popularized by the end notes in the Scofield Bible. Do you know the Scofield Bible? It’s a type of Bible translation. In the liner notes on Genesis, this Gap Theory is
posited as an explanation and an effort to marry evolution and the Bible record together. As I say, the main purpose of the theory was to harmonize the six days of creation with the new science at the time, the new science of geology which was developing
the geological timetable in Chalmers’ day. So, he thought that by
introducing the Gap, you could have it both ways. Six literal days of creation, six 24-hour days, you
could hang on to that idea, and you could account for
the hundreds of millions and billions of years that the geologists and the Young Theory of
Evolution was promoted at the time that he lived.
Now, there are a couple
of flaws with this theory. The first one is a scientific flaw. Think now, if there was a cataclysmic, that means worldwide destruction, that blew everything up to leave the Earth dark and void, would it not have also destroyed any evidence of life as well? You would think. In other words, fossil records
are based on the assumption that there has been no
change in the Earth’s past. A fossil record says, “Well,
there was this kind of life “and then there was this kind of life “and it evolved to this kind of life “and then it evolved…” No break in the record. That’s what the fossil record says. Just a steady cycle of life and death enables us to read the story of the past in the Earth’s crust.
Now, if something cataclysmic happened, wouldn’t there be a record of it? And aside from the flood, there’s no record of any cataclysm. The only cataclysmic event
that we see a record of on Earth is the flood. And we’ll talk about
that when we get to that. So, it’s interesting to note that no geologist today for example believes in the Gap Theory. So, geologists don’t
believe in the Gap Theory. Just people who wanna reconcile
evolution and the Bible. They hang on to the Gap Theory. Another problem with the Gap
Theory is a biblical argument, a Bible problem. You see, if you accept the Gap Theory, then you accept the fossil record as well.
And if you accept the fossil record, then you say that there is
a cycle of life and death that is present billions of years before Adam came on the scene. Think about that. That’s theologically impossible. In other words, there
was death before Adam. Now, Romans 5:12, says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin “entered into the world,
and death through sin, “and so sin spread to all
men because all sinned.” and so on. So, how did sin enter the world? Well, the Bible says it
entered through Adam, not before Adam. And then if we read 1
Corinthians 15:21 says, “For since by man came death, “by a man also came the
resurrection of the dead.” So, the Bible says that
death came into the world for both man and beast only when Adam brought sin into the world and not before.
So, if you are positing a theory that sin was there before Adam, think about it now. If death existed before
Satan’s sin or Adam’s sin, then the one responsible
for it was God Himself ’cause He’s the only one
there and that’s impossible. Sin brings death, not God, we know that. Romans 6:23, “For the
wages of sin is death, “but the gift of God is eternal life “in our Lord Jesus Christ.” All right, so as Christians, we need to be very careful to read what the Bible says and we need to formulate our models on what the word says without trying to compromise it or to conform it to try
to squeeze it into a mold to make it comfortable for us. Believe it or not, scientists
have been wrong before. They’ve made mistakes. All right, so let’s do a
study of just that verse and just look at what it
says period, all right? So it says, “The Earth was…” Now, in the American Standard
and the King James, it says, “And the Earth was…” There’s a conjunction.
In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the Earth and the Earth was a continuation. Now, the conjunction and simply denotes a sequence of events that
flow one from the other. Now, if the spirit of God through Moses wanted to put a gap there, he could have put a gap
there, he could have said, “In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the Earth.” And then there was this
cataclysmic event that took place because the angels rebelled and the Earth was destroyed, verse two, verse three, and then God recreated… He could have done that but He didn’t because, in the beginning, God created the heaven and
the Earth and the Earth was… He just kept on going. So, on the first day, in the beginning, God creates space, the
heavens, and matter, the Earth. Now Moses focuses on the matter and describes its condition
when it was originally formed. Any other conclusion is read into it to harmonize it
with a man-made theory. Let’s just go with what it says.
In the beginning, there’s time. God created an act of
will by a Supreme Being, the heavens, the space,
and the Earth, matter. So, time, space, and matter are created by God. When, the beginning, all right. Then it says the Earth
was formless and void. Now, Gap Theory people translate this as the Earth was ruined after a nuclear
holocaust or something. But in harmony with the first verse, this verse simply builds on
the idea already presented. The basic space and matter were created and verse two comments on
the condition of the matter at this time.
It has no shape. It has no form. It is empty. It is without inhabitants. So, Genesis says in the beginning, God creates time, space, and matter, and then he says that the
matter was formless and void. That’s all, it’s just a
comment on what the matter is. In other words, the raw
materials are there. The potential is there, but they are not yet shaped
into what we recognize as the Earth and as the universe. The matter is there. And then it says, “And darkness was over
the surface of the deep.” No form, no motion, no light, no energy. Nothing, it’s just there. So, this phrase is also a descriptive one where the author is not
describing what God is doing, but rather describing the universe as the initial elements
of time, space, and matter as they have been created. He created time, space, and matter and when you look at the matter, it was just there, formless and void. Darkness over the surface of the deep. The Earth was without form.
The oceans had no boundaries. There was no light since the matter had
not yet been energized. Now, Henry Morris, and I
mention him a lot, Henry Morris, he’s written several books, The Genesis Record, and Genesis Flood. He did a lot of work in this area. I quote him, he says, “Elements of matter and
molecules of water were present, “but they were not yet energized.” Kind of a formless, dark soup, with no sound, no shape, no form, okay. Then it says, “And the
The Spirit of God was moving “over the surface of the waters,” so fascinating this verse, is so fascinating. Now, the name for God here is Elohim and the term Elohim suggests that God is both unity and plurality and the triune nature of the
universe, so think about it, time, space, and matter reflect
the triune nature of God. Everything is so harmonious
when you look at it. Here we see a particular
person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, make a particular action and the Spirit of God moving over the surface of the waters. Someone asked, “How many
spirits were at creation?” And I would say, “Well, there are three, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” which make up the single
Godhead or God as we call it.
And let’s not be confused. It isn’t one spirit with
three personalities. I’ve heard people try to explain that. It isn’t one spirit with
three personalities. It is three individual
spirits within the Godhead. We have the same difficulty in grasping other spiritual ideas as well. I just mentioned before, how does the Holy Spirit dwell within us? I don’t know. I haven’t been asked to explain it. I’ve simply been asked to believe it. And the resurrection, all right, as proof of God’s divinity,
of Jesus’ divinity is enough for me. So, the last few verses are comments on the state of what had been created.
With this phrase, we have
a description of what God in the person of the Holy Spirit now does to the materials He’s created. So, in the beginning, time, space, matter, then He says and the
matter it was nothing, it was just soup, formless, void, no energy, no light, nothing. And then God did this, the
Spirit hovered, hovered, or moved. It’s not hovered, it’s hovered, excuse me, the proper pronunciation hovered, but some Bibles have moved, hovered. The interesting thing is this
word in the original language Rachaph in Hebrew means
to shake or to flutter. The image is of a mother hen
fluttering over her chicks.
The idea is of rapid
back-and-forth action. The best modern word in
English to describe it would be to vibrate. And then the Spirit of God
vibrated over the deep, the waters of the deep. So listen, “If the Earth
is to be energized, “there needs to be an energizer. “If it is to be set into motion, “there needs to be a Prime Mover.” Again, Henry Morris. It’s interesting to note that
the transmission of energy in the universe is in the form of waves, light waves, heat waves, sound waves, and microwaves, right? And Genesis 1:2 says that once the raw material was formed, it was energized and brought
into its present form by a Divine vibration
initiated by the Holy Spirit. How long ago was Genesis written? 1,500 years before Christ. 3,500 years ago, the writer is saying that matter was energized through some sort of vibrating waves.
How long did it take the man to figure that scientific principle out? How could they have known this idea? So, energy cannot create itself. It’s formless and void. So, the first importation
of energy to the universe is imparted by the vibrating
movement of the eternal powerful God. That’s what Moses is
saying in Genesis 1:1-2. So, in Genesis 1:1-2, we have God creating the
elements of the universe, time, space, and matter, and then energizing them through vibration to bring them into
shape and movement. Now listen, a person is
free to not believe this, but they cannot say
that if there is a God, this is not a logical and
scientifically correct way to bring the universe into being.
There must be a matter
before there is movement. Atheists call it the big bang. Well, how did that happen? Well, it just happened. Well, what caused it to happen? It’s not important. Now the big thing is it’s not important. Let’s just go with that and then… And they say we’re crazy. All right, so that’s the Gap Theory and I’ve used that to
demonstrate exegetically what the Bible is saying and how the Earth was formed. I’m no scientist on my part, but the words are
interesting, aren’t they? So, next time we get together, we’re gonna talk about this again. We’re gonna move through
Genesis, continue moving, and we’re gonna talk about
another important theory and that’s the Day/Age Theory. Are there five or six? Are they literal days? And why do we believe that? And so on.
I do wanna tell you, however, that we’re not going to be
this slow on every verse, okay? But Genesis 1:1-11, boy
there’s a lot of stuff in there and we need to set the table
here and lay the foundation and then we’ll move on with our lesson. So, that’s it for this time. I’ll hope you’ll be with us next time.
And those of you who are watching online or those of you who are
watching the video series, you can always go to BibleTalk.tv and download the class notes for this and eventually be able to download the transcript for the lesson as well. All right, we’re done, thank you.
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