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Is The A Gap Between the First Two Verses of Genesis

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.

More Information

What Is The Gap Theory? (GQ)

How Genesis 13 Undermines the Gap Theory (CIM)

Gap Theory Revisited (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