A Gap In Genesis?
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Some Christians say there is a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The gap is a period of history that was not recorded in the Bible... hundreds of millions of years during which evolution and death took place, bones were buried and fossilized, and the world gradually changed (eg. the layers of sediment built up) resulting in the record of "millions of years" that we see in geology today. At the end of this time period the world is ruined and destroyed leaving it formless and void. Starting in Genesis 1:2 God remakes the world, creating a new world on top of the previous one, including creating Adam and Eve. It is an attempt to accept both the Bible and evolution as true. What it actually does is oppose both scripture and science, accomplishing nothing, teaching what both Bible scholars and evolutionists consider nonsense, and opposing truth.
Not Biblical: What does the fossil record show? Death and disease. The fossils all come from dead animals (dinosaurs, fish, birds, reptiles, mammals, humans, etc.)(. Their remains in many cases show disease, fighting (violent death), cancer, and starvation. A god who uses death to "evolve" his creation is a wasteful and cruel "god," and therefore probably no god at all. In addition, since death opposes God, that also means disobedience (sin) was in the world. Yet, the Bible says that sin and death did not come into the world until Adam sinned. That's a major contradiction and problem.
If death existed before Adam, then Adam did not bring sin and death into the world. Jesus came to conquer the sin and death that Adam brought to humanity, and that was passed on to all of us. But, since death already existed before Adam, Jesus' death did not defeat death. It was a useless, senseless death on the cross and sin and death would have continued unchecked.
"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." - Romans 5:12
The entire Bible, in many respects, is about the battle with death until in Revelation 20:14 death is destroyed (thrown into the pit). Yet the Gap Theory says that God used death, as a good thing, to evolve life to higher and higher levels. Then God creates a new new world, built on the blood in the soil and the graves of the dead in the ground, and He calls it VERY GOOD. That does not make sense, and it certainly is not Biblical.
Romans 6:23 says that death is "the wages of sin." The penalty for disobeying God is death. Our sin debt was purchased by the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, who is "the propitiation for our sins" (John 2:2). But if, as the Gap Theory states, "death reigned" for billions of years before Adam, then death is not the wages of sin. (See Romans 5:12 above.) Scripture is wrong. Instead death was part of God's creative purpose for hundreds of millions of years. How could the death of Christ then put away sin? The Gap Theory opposes the gospel and Biblical truth, and defames the holy character of God.
Not Accepted Science
The purpose of the Gap Theory is to incorporate "scientific" ideas about evolution and an old earth in to the Bible. But, it doesn't even accomplish that. No professional geologists or astronomers are known to accept the Gap Theory. For example, it contradicts their assumption that the past is continuous with the present, and that is required for a naturalistic view of geological history.
How Genesis 13 Undermines the Gap Theory (CIM)
Index To AIG Articles About The Gap Theory (AIG)
Lucy Image Credit: Federigo Federighi - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australopithecus_afarensis_models_University_of_Pisa%27s_Natural_History_Museum.jpg
Before you get the good news, you need to know the bad news. It's about you. God says:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. - Romans 3:23
Sin means disobeying God, aka breaking God's law. God is perfect and perfection is required to enter heaven. It's a standard none of us can achieve. We all fall short. For example, compare yourself with just one of the Ten Commandments. Have you ever told a lie?
All liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. - Revelation 21:8. Or what about:
Have you ever taken something that does not belong to you, no matter how small? Have you ever looked at another person with lust? In Matthew 5 Jesus said:
Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Have you done that?
You have broken God's laws. You have sinned. There must be justice, and that means eternity in hell, the lake of fire, the second death. Unless...
Unless there was someone willing to pay that penalty on your behalf. Someone who will take on themselves the consequences you deserve. And there is. There is one person who can and will do that. That person is Jesus Christ. If you trust this is true (believe), and repent (turn away from disobeying God), Jesus' death is applied to your account and you are freed from the penalty of sin to be with God forever.