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Answering Questions -- the GAP THEORY of Creation
Our Response To A Proponent Of The Gap Theory
Dear Rob,
Regarding your recent email and our article on the “Gap Theory,” you say,
1. [You wrote] “Still trying to make sense of your article regarding the gap theory… Especially the strange statement that all things were made with the first six days of Genesis… What a very odd statement to make…”
Our Response:
We didn’t make that statement. We simply repeated it from the Bible. Here it is,
“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them …” (Exodus 20:11)
In what way is the Bibles’ statement on this “strange” or “odd” ??
2. [You wrote], “Something is amiss and I believe it is your interpretations… I do indeed believe in the Bible… But incomplete incoherent writings and theories as yours make me doubt men…"
Our Response:
We didn’t interpret anything. Nor did we spin a “theory.” We simply quoted the Bible as it plainly speaks. Here’s what the Bible says— literally— when you place Genesis 1:1 alongside Exodus 20:11,
(Genesis 1:1) (Exodus 20:11)
In the beginning……………………………………..For in six days
God created……………………………………………the Lord made
The heavens and the earth………………………..the heavens and the earth
……………………………………………………………..and the seas
……………………………………………………………..and all that is in them
Where is the interpretation? It says what it says. Where is the Theory? The “theory” is with the arbitrary insertion of a “gap” in the first few verses. That’s why it is universally known as the “Gap Theory.” That’s what it is called! But that “theory” is not a fact in the verses above, or anywhere else in the Bible.
Didn’t you say “I do indeed believe the Bible.” ? Then read it. According to Exodus 20:11, whatever God did in the “beginning” with “the heavens and the earth,” He did it with “all (not part) that is in them.” And He did it all in “six days.”
If you want to “interpret” these passages, or “theorize” them into something else, go ahead. But you will come up with something different than what they actually say. Look at them, read them word for word, and say it aloud. When you do that, you will be saying exactly the same thing that we say in the article. Try it.
You see, when I read the email you sent me, I read it literally, in its plain, straightforward sense. I didn’t try and “interpret” your email, because it made sense to me, as it is written, in its primary sense. That’s why I understood it. Had I tried to “theorize” and “interpret” your plainly written message, I would have put my own meaning into it, becoming the ‘writer’ myself. Then your email would have said what I wanted it to say.
That is what you have done to Genesis and the creation account. When you mention “incoherent writings” regarding our article on the “Gap Theory,” the “incoherence” is with the reader, not the writer, [which was the Holy Spirit through Moses]. Read Exodus 20:11 out loud and listen to what comes out of your mouth. IN SIX DAYS…ALL THAT IS IN THEM! If there are dinosaur bones, fossils, “caveman” artifacts, or geologic rock-strata in the ground, or anything else, they were all made within the 6 days.
3. [You wrote], “Just as God created the earth He also created day and night and NAMED them…and no matter how many times I read it I see the same thing…the first day is created…AFTER GENESIS 1:1 and AFTER God’s spirit moves across the waters. Logic tells me the earth was in darkness…there was no day nor night as we now know it…until God made it so…on a planet already here…” [20 billions years before the 6-day-ages of Genesis 1.3]
Our Response:
You may feel that “logic” tells you something, but if the Bible tells you something else, believe it. Your “logic” would have you believe that whatever God created in the six days was created beginning with verse 3, when you say that day one began. That would mean that the existing earth-water-matrix matter of verse 2, and even the heavens and earth of verse 1, would have been created before the first day (day one).
But didn’t Exodus 20:11 quoted above just tell us that ALL that is in “the heavens and the earth and the seas” was created —not outside of— but within the six days? If there is anything anywhere at anytime in the heavens, and in the earth (including its crustal formations as deep as you want to go), and in the seas, then “in six days the Lord made” it —ALL of it. “FOR IN SIX DAYS the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the seas and ALL THAT IS IN THEM.” (Exodus 20:11)
Did you actually read Exodus 20:11 to say “FOR IN SIX DAYS the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the seas and ALL THAT IS IN THEM, except for the heavens and the earth of Genesis 1:1, and except for the formless and void earth and the surface of the deep and the surface of the waters of Genesis 1:2.”?? The problem here is not with reading the passage— it is with believing it.
Since the Scripture reads that anything that exists anywhere in the entire universe (heavens, earth, seas, “all that is in them”) was created in six days, then we know that verses 1-2 of Genesis 1 must be included within the six days. And they are. Here’s how it fits,
1. In Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”) you have the answer to your question “How could God have created the ‘heavens’ if nothing was in it?” Space is not nothing. ‘Nothing’ is nothing. Space is something. Therefore, it must be created, and it was.
2. Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out…(Isaiah 42:5)
3. Verse one has all of the elements of God creating the space/mass/time continuum. “In the beginning [time] God created [energy] the heavens [space] and the earth [matter].” The creation account proceeds in stages of activity, and in increments of time. At this stage of the creation all was enshrouded in “darkness” (verse 2)— “darkness” which also had to be created. (“The One [God] forming light and creating darkness… (Isaiah 45:7)
4. Note that in the creation account, God first creates—THEN He names—i.e., verses 7-8 and verses 9-10, etc., a pattern repeated throughout Genesis 1. Likewise, the “darkness” first exists in verse 2, THEN it is named in verse 5; “and the darkness He called night.” But it exists already in verse 2! And verse 2 is an extension of verse 1, simply explaining the condition at that stage of creation of the same “earth” mentioned in verse 1.
5. Therefore, the “darkness” of verse 2 is part of the dark-light/night-day/evening-morning cycle that makes up each of the 6 days of Genesis. Your confusion stems from making the ‘naming’ and the ‘creating’ of the darkness the same event. It is not.
6. The “light” part of the daily cycle is introduced in verse 3. It is named “day” (our “daylight”) in verse 5, and in that same verse it is defined as one-half (not he whole) of the dark-light/night-day/evening-morning cycle that make up “one day.” (“day” and “night” constitute “one day,” verse 5)
7. But the “dark” half of the “one day,” named as “night” in verse 5, exists in verse 2—and as we have seen, by extension, in verse 1.
8. Therefore, in 6 days God created the heavens and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them (Exodus 20:11). Genesis 1 describes the process. In stages of development and increments of time (“6 days…finished,” verse 31; 2:1) God created, in verse 1, time (“in the beginning”), space (“heavens”), and mass/matter (“earth”). At this stage of creation the earth was a cosmic sized, watery and unformed ’earthball’ (“formless and void…deep…waters”) blanketed in “darkness” (later named “night,” verse 5). Then God introduced daylight (“light,” called “day,” verses 3-5), and called the period from verse 2/darktime to verse 3/daytime-cycle “day one,” in verse 5.
9. That was all done in “one day,” verses 1-5.
10. Just as the creation of Adam proceeded through stages— formless “dust” to “formed” to “breath of life” to “became a living being,”— so too did the formation of the heavens and earth proceed through stages. These stages involved time increments. Genesis 1 describes these stages. It also frames them all between “the beginning” (1:1) and “were completed” (2:1)— establishing the total time increment as 6 days (1:31). With this Exodus 20:11 agrees, and so do we.
In the beginning……………………………………..For in six days
God created……………………………………………the Lord made
The heavens and the earth………………………..the heavens and the earth
……………………………………………………………..and the seas
……………………………………………………………..and all that is in them
(Genesis 1:1)…………………………………………..(Exodus 20:11)
4. [You wrote], “God…created…the sun and the stars the 4th [day]… Where did the ‘light’ come from on day one that divided day from night? Was there a ‘substitute’ sun until He made the real one on Day 4?”
Our Response:
God knew people would question His Word— some would be skeptics, others full-blown unbelievers, and some even sun worshippers.
“And beware, lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them …” (Deuteronomy 4:19)
Jesus, who Himself is the Creator (Col. 1:16) and the “true light” of the world (John 1:9), knew the predisposition of sinful man to look to the sun and the heavenly bodies for his “religion” and “light.” Therefore Jesus did not give the creation of the sun either priority or preeminence in the order of His creation, but rather set it on day 4. Where, then, did the “light” from Genesis 1:3 to 1:14 come from? Where will the light come from in the new earth? Directly from God, who “is Light” !
“And they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them…” (Rev. 22:5; 21:23) !
It would have been the same in Genesis, days 1-3. Let us glory in the true "Light," our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who Himself created all things. (John 1:3)
The same Bible which gives us the Gospel of personal salvation in John 3:16, in plainly understandable terms, gives us the Creation account... Let us believe both as they are written.