Wayne Jackson authored this short article which appeared in the Christian Courier of November 1988. The paper was published by the East Main Street Church of Christ in Stockton, California. Jackson was also the editor.
One of the theories which attempts to harmonize the Bible with evolutionary chronology (i.e., that the earth is billions of years old) is known as the "gap theory." This view, which is barely more than 150 years old, argues that there exists a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, during which there lived successive generations of plants, animals and perhaps even pre-Adamite men (cf. First Corinthians 15:45). According to some, God destroyed this original creation due to a Satanic rebellion. Genesis 1:2ff therefore, is supposed to describe a re-creation while the "gap between 1:1 and 1:2 allows for the ancient fossils of the geological time column.
There is absolutely no Biblical basis for this compromising theory. There are several important grammatical considerations in Genesis 1 which militate against the gap theory. Mark them please.
1. Genesis 1:2 begins with "and" (Hebrew: waw, a copulative) which argues against a long time span between these verses. The Hebrew grammars and lexicons consider 1:2 to be an explanatory noun clause which describes a state contemporaneous with that of the main verb in verse 1 (cf. W. Fields, Unformed and Unfilled, p. 75-86).
2. Note Genesis 1:26. Man was given dominion over all of the earth and every creature upon it. This is not consistent with the notion that many generations of living creatures, over which man had no dominion, had already died and become extinct by the time humanity arrived upon the earth.
3. In 1:31, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good." At the end of the creation week, everything that God had made was still alive upon the earth. Moreover, it was pronounced, "very good." Corruption, death and extinction had not degraded the creation as yet. Make these notations. The gap theory is false.
No comments:
Post a Comment