Creationists. How many of you believe the Gap Theory?

Question

Also, do you allow any room for evolution by interpreting the Genesis timeline in a metaphoric sense instead of literally? That is, were a day represents a time period other that 24 hours such as in "...a day is as a thousand years..." or Daniel's weeks.

Monkey Monkey - That had never occurred to me before. "Evolution needs death to work."

dze - there is no doubt in my mind that God has the technology. God is the technology. I am just working on the "how" and I was wondering what other people thought.

Enviro Dude - Thanks for the edit. You had me wondering for a moment. You kinda lost me with demons not being fallen angels though. Do you have reference to this?

EnviroDude - I strongly disagree with you about demons. You say they are not fallen angels but I believe that they are. The rest of your answer however is perhaps a viable explanation of the fall of Lucifer and would account for the fossil record and the age of the Earth as assessed by scientific dating methods.

Answer 1

How much time elapses between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2? The world may never know.

edit:

Why is it important? Well, there are many things the Bible doesn't teach us in Genesis, such as the origin of Demons or how Satan was allowed on the planet when all was "good".

The one benefit of the "gap theory" (in addition to allowing Bible and Science to actually agree on things like the age of the Universe/planet), is that it allows one to postulate that there was a previous life event on the planet earth.

For instance: the planet was populated with things like plants and animals (dinosaurs) and Lucifer was the head of the planet - ruling it for God.

After a while, Lucifer became jealous of God and wanted to be God. So, Lucifer says "I will be like God". At that time, God and the other angels that did not follow Lucifer clean up the planet.

The angels that followed Lucifer were bound to Hades.

Lucifer was stripped of his angelic authority, yet was able to remain on earth.

The war between the two forces stripped the planet of all life forms (hence, the earth was void and darkness [Lucifer, now satan was over the surface of the planet]).

God recreates life and a new creature - man. Man is created in the image of God. When Satan sees man, he sees God.

So, Satan has to find a way to get into the garden. Even though man had authority over all the life, he did not exercise his authority over Satan. And when Man sinned, he gave his authority to Satan.

This is how Satan was able to offer the kingdoms of the world to Jesus, because Satan owned them.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, he stripped Satan of his authority and gave it back to his followers.

Answer 2

The "Gap Theory" and "Modified Gap Theory" have no Biblical support. Many verses support the 24 hour days of creation, even the verses in Genesis 1 that state the "evening and morning" were the first day, etc. A 24 hour period is divided into evening and morning. An evening does not last millions of years and neither does a morning.

Moses declared that all created things had their genesis in the same week (Genesis 1:31). This included both Earth and man, and that “week” consisted of literal days such as Israel observed in keeping the Sabbath (Exodus 20:11)

The prophets affirmed that Jehovah’s sovereignty had been evident to man “from the beginning,” even from “the foundations of the earth” (cf. Isaiah 40:21).

Paul argued that evidences of the invisible God have been perceived (obviously by man) “since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:21).

These verses point out that man has walked this earth since the beginning of creation, not millions of years later. Either you believe these verses, or you don't.

Christ stated that “male and female” (i.e., Adam and Eve) had been made “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark10:6), and Christ should know for He was there (John 1:1ff.)! That statement never can be harmonized with the notion that the Earth existed billions of years before the creation of mankind.

The Bible supports a young earth and a literal 24 day / week of creation. Absolutely no Biblical proof can be provided for any of the Gap Theories that are popular today.

Answer 3

There are many Christians on here who simply say they believe in Evolution only for the sake of appearing intelligent.

Yet they will try to explain Genesis by saying that it isn't 24 hour days which is absurd and not being fair to the text.

The Genesis days is absolutely referring to 24 hour days. The question is WHY? Is it because that is how it happened? Or could it be because there is a theological point being made? Or could it be because of the cultural context of Genesis?

The Bible as a whole is not meant to be read or understood like a modern history or science textbook or a police report for that matter. The Bible has the story of God and has the human elements of aesthetics woven into the referential content. This is unlike any modern history or science textbook.

Therefore I do not uphold to the Gap theory. Nor the days as years or whatever. I believe that God created. I believe He is author of life.

Evolution occurs and has occurred. Evolution has lead to a number of different species. This is hard to argue against. The question I have is how much a role did evolution play in giving us the plethora of species we have today?

I do not believe that humans are a direct result of evolution. I also believe that life on Earth originated and was created by God, even if only started with a single celled organism.

Answer 4

There seems to be room to interpret a gap between verse 1 & 2 of Genesis 1. But what difference does it make? There isn't any doubt about the days after verse 2. Everything else was created very quickly. The references to time in other places in scripture are very clear as to their intentions. I know the older I get the faster time moves by. Just makes sense that time is irrelevant to the One without beginning or end. And if we believe that God did everything else recorded in scripture, then why couldn't he create the earth in 6 days? It's not a stretch to believe that. Ripping pages out of scripture that doesn't make sense to us reduces God to a liar. If we call God a liar and still believe in him, what does that say of us? He is not a liar and scripture shouldn't be twisted to conform to this worlds view. Science does not conclusively contradict the Bibles account of creation. Man's interpretation of data regarding rocks and fossils does not invalidate any scripture.

Answer 5

I do not believe in the "gap theory" or in evolution. There is no other mention anywhere else in the Bible of the gap. The gap was invented by people looking for a way to reconcile human-made science with God-revealed Truth. God's Truth trumps science any day in my book. I do believe in natural selection and adaptation, I just can't make the leap that those things lead to the development of totally new species. Also, according to the Biblical account, all of creation happened before "the Fall" and its resulting curse. Before the Fall there was no death or decay, those things are part of the curse. Evolution requires death to work, and lots of it. Think about it.

Answer 6

The gap theory's pure bunk! as far as your thousand years/day I can't say it better or shorter than the following direct quote (see link at end):
"Reasons why the
days were 24 hours

* Genesis 1:14 says God created the lights to divide day from night, and to be for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years. If the days are ages, then what are the years?
* If a day is an age, then what is a night? The concept becomes ludicrous when you try to stretch the length of a day.
* Whenever the word “day” in the Bible is limited by a number (such as the first day, the third day, the sixth day) it always means a 24-hour day.
* Whenever the word “day” is used with the phrase “evening and morning,” it always means an ordinary night-day cycle.
* Among the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel, recorded in Exodus 20, God said that His creation in six days followed by a day of rest was to be the pattern for the Israelites' working week: six days of labor followed by a day of rest. “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work …,” God said, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”
This would not make sense if they had to work for six million years followed by a million years of rest.

Some people think that a day may mean a thousand years, because the Apostle Peter said that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).

But Peter did not say a day is a thousand years, but it is as a thousand years. He is saying that God is outside time, that a thousand years are no more significant than a day in God's eternal scheme of things. People who say Peter meant that a day is a thousand years are ignoring the second part of Peter's statement, which says a thousand years are as one day. How could we count how many days are in a thousand years if a day only means a thousand years? It becomes silly when you try to force a meaning that wasn't intended." http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/days.html

Answer 7

The Bible says "one day is as a thousand years" in God's sight. Daylight savings, leap years, various calendars, time zones, relativity theory of Einstein have shown time can be interpreted in many ways. If you believe that God can make the sun stop, shadows go back up stairways - just two examples in the Bible, then anything is possible. A "gap" would be contrary to evolutionary belief which is progressive by nature.

Answer 8

no i think God has the technology to do it exactly like it was written ... and other things that point to an older earth and creatures such as the dinosaurs that existed maybe before this present creation just were not covered in the text period ... its not a science book but a record of mankind ...

Answer 9

The hole conception postulates that among Gen. one million:one million and one million:two there was once an fully exclusive construction which, a few declare, was once burnt up by means of a "Satan's Flood," and and then the earth was once re-shaped and the six days of Genesis construction started out. The hole is claimed to have worried pleasant eons of time. This hole conception was once shaped in keeping with the uniformitarian suggestion of lengthy a while first carried out by means of geologists within the 19th century. The hole conception is contradicted by means of the Bible itself on a quantity of counts. one million. Genesis one million:two offers us a record of 3 features: the earth was once formless and empty; darkness blanketed it; and the Holy Spirit was once soaring, or vibrating (identical phrase within the Hebrew) over the waters. No Hebrew historic narrative begins with a record of features. The rationalization ALWAYS follows the usual declaration of in which the historical past begins or is headed. Thus, Genesis one million:two might be rightly visible as an evidence of the earliest moments following the construction of the time/area/mass continuum in Genesis one million:one million. two. two Pet. three:five states obviously that the earth was once shaped out of water and by means of water. No reference is made to land previous that, that's what the hole conception proposes. three. Ezekiel 28:12-17 is typically viewed a "double" passage containing a parenthetic touching on Satan as good as an cope with to the king of Tyre. In it, the being stated was once in Eden as a innocent mum or dad cherub. If you go reference this passage to the passage that's obviously related to Satan in Isaiah 14:12-15, you'll see a parallel constitution which rather can not be denied. There are a sequence of "I will's" in Isaiah responded by means of the corresponding movements of the Lord in go back in Ezekiel. This being the case, Satan, or Lucifer as he was once initially, would now not had been in uprising earlier than Eden was once shaped and thus there was once no "Satan's Flood' which would have destroyed an international he had corrupted in a few style of hole among Genesis one million:one million and one million:two. four. In the Fourth Commandment, Exodus 20:eleven, it's obviously acknowledged that the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that's in them had been created in six days. So the hole conception does now not preserve in which the leisure of the Bible is involved. Geologically and archaeologically this might now not be legitimate, both, for the arena destroyed within the "Satan's Flood" might NOT be the fossilized global the hole theorists most often postulate. The fossil strata we all know might had been thoroughly destroyed by means of NOAH's flood had they been from an previous time.

Answer 10

7 days