The Gap Theory of Genesis

[Deacon]

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:


Adam brought death. There was no Adam before the "gap". So how could there have been death before Adam's sin???

To find your answer just keep reading the verse.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

So Adam brought death to man.

Rob

 

[Amy.G]

To find your answer just keep reading the verse.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

So Adam brought death to man.

Rob

If I'm not mistaken, animals also die. So do trees and everything living thing on the earth. Our entire universe is in decay. Even scientists say the sun will eventually burn itself out.

I assume you're saying that all this death (apart from humans) was in motion even before Adam was created. I see no biblical evidence for that.

 

[Deacon]

Well don't look for the evidence in that verse.

Rob

 

[Amy.G]

Well don't look for the evidence in that verse.

Rob

Feel free to show us the evidence in any verse. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Jedi Knight]

The fact that the fossil record shows animals dieing long before the existance of man. You're so called clear teaching as I've noted previously isn't so clear. Just your interpretation of it. Its certain that death came to mankind by one man. But there is not indication that the author meant to all life.

Thinkingstuff......you think too much! When God was finished with creation He said it was good..... death could not be good as part of 6 day creation. The fossil record points to some catastrophic event in the past happened. Hummmm if that was the flood you would expect billions of dead things buried in rock piles all over the world right?

 

[Thinkingstuff]

And you STILL deny Scripture! Isaiah 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

The future prophecy is for the earth to be as it was before sin entered it.

Figurative or literal? And also its under the heading New heaven and New earth a new order. Not one based off the old. This is also apocalyptic literature. So, what do you choose to take literal and what figurative? Obviously, you infer this passage into the past literally as well as the future. In the same chapter is says

5 who say, 'Keep away; don't come near me,
for I am too sacred for you!'
Such people are smoke in my nostrils,
a fire that keeps burning all day.

also

who sit among the graves
and spend their nights keeping secret vigil;
who eat the flesh of pigs,
and whose pots hold broth of unclean meat

and

"See, it stands written before me:
I will not keep silent but will pay back in full;
I will pay it back into their laps-

So are we to assume that the future promise of peace is only for non pork eating Jews. And that we as gentiles are not forgiven? It is clear this promise is for the Jews look here

I will bring forth descendants from Jacob,
and from Judah those who will possess my mountains;
my chosen people will inherit them,
and there will my servants live.

It is clear specifically for Israel not gentiles. Why was Isaiah written? To warn of Judah's inpending doom but God also left them with hope some of the language is to be taken literally and other figuratively. You choose to believe this about the future but ignore the rest of the chapter that shows it directly present to Jews and not gentile christians.

 

[Thinkingstuff]

Thinkingstuff......you think too much! When God was finished with creation He said it was good..... death could not be good as part of 6 day creation. The fossil record points to some catastrophic event in the past happened. Hummmm if that was the flood you would expect billions of dead things buried in rock piles all over the world right?

Look dispassionately at the universe. Death is very much a part of how things work. Our environment is reliant on death and the cycles of living and dying. The fossil records do point to a catastrophic event but not just one. several. There are billions of dead things all over the world. Ask yourself where does oil come from?

Think about these things

“It violently contradicts what the astronomers, geologists, and evolutionists tell us about the order of appearance of things on Earth and the time at which they appeared. [...] The table below highlights some of the more important astronomical and paleontological events pertinent to our current study.

Also

The Genesis writer(s) didn't understand the nature of darkness either. He said that God created light (somehow before the sun and stars were made) and then "divided the light from the darkness" (1:3-4). Light, however, is not something that can be separated from darkness. Light is an electromagnetic radiation from an energy source like the sun or stars, and darkness is merely the absence of light. Without light, there will automatically be darkness. No god is needed to separate or divide light from darkness. We know that today; the prescientific Genesis writer(s) didn't.”

also

“Thousands of books were published in the nineteenth century, most of them in England, attempting to harmonize geology and Genesis. In this dreary and pathetic literature, one books stands out from all the others as so delightful and fantastic that it deserves special mention. It was called Omphalos (the Greek word for navel), and was written by zoologist Philip Gosse, father of the eminent British poet and critic, Edmune Gosse. [... He] admitted geology had established beyond any doubt that the earth had a long geological history in which plants and animals flourished before the time of Adam. He was also convinced that the earth was created about 4,000 B.C., in six days, exactly as described in Genesis. How did he reconcile these apparently contradictory opinions? Very simple. Just as Adam was created with a navel, the relic of a birth which never occurred, so the entire earth was created with all the fossils relics of a past which had no existence except in the mind of God!”

 

[sag38]

Where does the scripture tell us that the lion laying with the lamb if figurative? You are making your own personal interpretation. If the scripture doesn't say it is figurative or if it isn't quite obvious then it must be taken at face value. Otherwise, I can take any part of scripture and make it figurative just as many liberals do today. They do the same thing with the virgin birth, demonic possession, the ressurection of Jesus from the dead, Jonah and the fish, etc.

 

[Thinkingstuff]

Where does the scripture tell us that the lion laying with the lamb if figurative? You are making your own personal interpretation. If the scripture doesn't say it is figurative or if it isn't quite obvious then it must be taken at face value. Otherwise, I can take any part of scripture and make it figurative just as many liberals do today. They do the same thing with the virgin birth, demonic possession, the ressurection of Jesus from the dead, Jonah and the fish, etc.

Then using the same passage in Isaiah you must admit that this promise is not for you but only for the Jews because that is the literal translation of that passage. Also note when in apocalyptic literature does it ever say. Now we are being symbolic now we are not? It never does it is assumed that the reader understands what to take literally and what to take figuratively. Unless you believe everything in revelation is to be literal.

 

[RAdam]

Oil, coal, etc were created as a result of the flood.

Again, death came about as a result of man's sin in the garden of eden. You can refuse to accept that if you want, but you are taking the word of man over God. Let God be true but every man a liar. I'll take God's word.

 

[robycop3]

Here's what happens when people look outside the bible for definitive answers. How did those things happen in such a short period of time? It's called a worldwide flood, you know a cataclysm. The entire earth was covered with water, every human and animal on the planet not inside the ark were killed, and the earth was forever changed. In that flood you had incredible geological occurances take place as well as the fossil record laid down.

Noone can prove that the earth isn't old? How do you figure? I can do so using only one thing - God's word. It plainly declares the age of the universe to be a little over 6,000 years old. I believe it. I wish you did too.

Many of the geological upheavals we see simply COULD NOT have occurred overnight...such things as the formation of "Devil's Tower" of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind fame. Any force, including floodwaters strong enough to have washed the resta the mountain from that 'tower' woulda washed it away as well. Same for the Grand Canyon. The forse of the waters woulda carried away ALL the rock, not merely cut a gorge into it.

Noah's flood was violent over mucha the world. Proof is seen in Canada, where there are some house-size boulders that have been carried some 50 miles from their "homes". In nature, only water can move a rock that size without breaking it.

There are millions & millions of fossils in thousands of museums, classrooms, & private collections worldwide. They would not exist if GOD hadn't preserved them. Now, GOD does NOTHING man knows about without a reason, and I believe His reason for creating & preserving these fossils was to show us tangible, empirical evidence of past ages. I mean. He even saw to it that some specimens of soft invertebrates such as jellyfish were fossilized! A large quantity of fossilized jellyfish were found in Mt. Simon-Wonewoc in central Wisconsin, in rock much-older than 6K years.

Over 9/10 of all the animal species that we know ever existed are now extinct. But Scripture sez that Noah had at least one pair of EVERY land animal or bird aboard the ark. Thus, those ancient species were extinct before Noah's time, and the men of that day could not have killed off that many animal species had they united in an attempt to do so.

Then, there's the limit of the speeda light. Light travels its fastest in a vacuum, and God has allowed us to discover that speed is some 186 K miles per second. Astronomy uses several methods such as triangulation, parallax, inverse-square law, etc. to measure the approximate distance to the stars. Using these methods, it's found that the farthest object we can see with the unaided eye, the Andromeda galaxy, is so distant that it takes light from it about 2.5 million years to reach us. (This galaxy is 10 times the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.) The glow in the night sky we call the Milky Way, part of our own galaxy, is an average of about 30 K light-years distant.

Man has unsuccessfully tried many methods to try to speed up light and other rays past its upper speed limit, so we must conclude this upper limit is one of GOD'S laws of physics. And we should conclude that He has allowed to discover these various laws, and all our knowledge of physics, astronomy, geology, and archaeology for a reason. He has caused us to draw the conclusion that the earth is very old because that's His will...otherwise, He would be deceiving us, and that's something He DOES NOT DO. just as we can believe every word He's caused to be written, we can believe those phenomena He has shown us by revelation, without the use of words.

 

[Jedi Knight]

Many of the geological upheavals we see simply COULD NOT have occurred overnight...

But with God ALL things are possible. Did Adam become a man overnight?

 

[RAdam]

God doesn't do anything that contradicts His word. He isn't going to preserve a fossil that contradicts what He plainly told us in scripture. Furthermore, scripture is said by Paul to be a thorough furnisher, able to make us perfect (complete). If so, then we don't have the need to look outside the bible to understand things like how the world came into existence. While science and history help further illuminate things in the bible, they aren't necessary to the understanding of those things, and true science and history will never contradict the bible. What you are saying is that God has contradicted the bible with the fossil record and that we can't understand how the world came into existence by only having the bible. That's nonsense.

Now, about the formation of things, I think Mt. St. Helens proved that liquids can do major damage in a short amount of time. The flood could most certainly have carved out the Grand Canyon, and I believe it did.

Concerning extinct animals, it is true that Noah took a remnant of the species on the ark. However, you are failing to understand the cataclysmic event the flood truly was. Peter said the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. The pre-flood world is far different from the post-flood world. In the pre-flood world there was no rain, but rather a mist came up from the earth and watered the plants. Many have speculated about a vapor canopy that surrounded the earth, creating a perfect greenhouse. Thus, the windows of heaven were opened, using this canopy as one source to flood the earth. Makes sense to be and seems reasonable, particularly in light of Genesis 1:6,7. The severe change in climate and landscape from the pre-flood world to the post-flood world probably caused many animals to eventually go extinct. It sure cut down on the lifespan of man.

 

[robycop3]

No, the Geand Canyon could NOT have been cut quickly. Any force great enough to have done so woulda cut away ALL the rock, not just worn a gash in it. The GC was made by the Colorado River's slowly wearing a trough in the rock.

The "Devil's Tower" of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind fame was made by the slow erosion of the surrounding softer rock away from the harder rock of the 'tower' Any force strong enough to have quickly removed the mountain surrounding the tower woulda taken the tower down also.

And again, SCRIPTURE sez that Noah took at least one male & female of *EVERY* animal & bird aboard the ark. 9/10 of all animal species that ever lived were already extinct by the tima the flood.

And just cuz something's not mentioned in Scripture doesn't mean it CONTRADICTS Scripture. For example, there's not one quark of Scripture even remotely mentioning the nation of India, which contains 1/6 of the world's population. Same with the prehistoric past. It plainly existed. What God did just before He created man was to re-shape the face of the earth into its current arrangement of the seas & continents.

To say otherwise is to pit opinion and guesswork against the TANGIBLE, EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that GOD has preserved for us to give us an inkling of how the world useta be.

 

[Thinkingstuff]

Oil, coal, etc were created as a result of the flood.

Again, death came about as a result of man's sin in the garden of eden. You can refuse to accept that if you want, but you are taking the word of man over God. Let God be true but every man a liar. I'll take God's word.

Got to love psuedo science. Note in order to create oil you need more than just "great presure" You also need heat and lots of time.

 

[matt wade]

Got to love psuedo science. Note in order to create oil you need more than just "great presure" You also need heat and lots of time.

Or God that can do miracles.

 

[sag38]

I guess robycop was there witnessing all this supposedly happen over millions of years. I guess that koolaide he's been drinking must taste pretty good.

 

[RAdam]

You don't need lots of time, you need pressure. Pressure is the key, not time.

People are always overestimating the time it takes for certain actions to occur. One example is soil deposits. I'm amazed that 1) so many smart people apply a uniform distribution to soil deposits when it is certain that it is not uniform and 2) that people cannot understand that dust settles quickly. Anyone that has ever dusted a house comes to understand just how quickly things can settle and cover something up, and that is in a closed environment.

 

[RAdam]

I guess robycop was there witnessing all this supposedly happen over millions of years. I guess that koolaide he's been drinking must taste pretty good.

No, it's that he and others won't take God at His word, and instead trust science falsely so called that is based on a whole lot of assumptions, and mosty bad ones at that.

 

[Thinkingstuff]

No, it's that he and others won't take God at His word, and instead trust science falsely so called that is based on a whole lot of assumptions, and mosty bad ones at that.

Nope. We don't buy into your interpretation of the litarary type God is using to express his creation to man. We trust God's word entirely. We just don't trust another man's traditional view of it.