Continued from… The Gap and Ruin-Reconstruction theories? Part I

Problems with the Gap Theory

Believing in the gap theory presents a number of problems and inconsistencies, especially for a Christian.

1. It is inconsistent with God creating everything in six days, as Scripture states.

   Exodus 20:11 says, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Thus the creation of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) and the sea and all that is in them (the rest of the creation) was completed in six days.¹⁵ Is there any time for a gap?

2. It puts death, disease, and suffering before the Fall, contrary to Scripture.

   Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” From this we understand that there could not have been human sin or death before Adam. The Bible teaches in 1 Corinthians 15 that Adam was the first man, and as a result of his rebellion (sin), death and corruption (disease, bloodshed, and suffering) entered the universe. Before Adam sinned, there could not have been any animal (nephesh¹⁶) or human death. Note also that there could not have been a race of men before Adam that died in Lucifer’s flood because 1 Corinthians 15:45 tells us that Adam was the first man.

   Genesis 1:29–30 teaches us that animals and man were originally created to eat plants, which is consistent with God’s description of His creation as “very good.” But how could a fossil record, which gives evidence of disease, violence, death, and decay (fossils have been found of animals apparently fighting and certainly eating each other), be described as “very good”? For this to be true, the death of billions of animals (and many humans) as seen in the fossil record must have occurred after Adam’s sin. The historical event of the global Flood, recorded in Genesis, explains the presence of huge numbers of dead animals buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.

   Romans 8:22 teaches that “the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.” Clearly the whole of creation was, and is, subject to decay and corruption because of sin. When gap theorists believe that disease, decay, and death existed before Adam sinned, they ignore that this contradicts the teaching of Scripture.¹⁷

   The version of the gap theory that puts Satan’s fall at the end of the geological ages, just before the supposed Lucifer’s flood that destroyed all pre-Adamic life, has a further problem—the death and suffering recorded in the fossils must have been God’s fault. Since it happened before Satan’s fall, Satan and sin cannot be blamed for it.¹⁸

3. The gap theory is logically inconsistent because it explains away what it is supposed to accommodate—supposed evidence for an old earth.

   Gap theorists accept that the earth is very old—a belief based on geologic evidence interpreted with the assumption that the present is the key to the past. This assumption implies that in the past sediments containing fossils formed at basically the same rate as they do today. This process is also used by most geologists and biologists to justify belief that the geologic column represents billions of years of earth history. This geologic column has become the showcase of evolution because the fossils are claimed to show ascent from simple to complex life-forms.

   This places gap theorists in a dilemma. Committed to literal creation because of their acceptance of a literal view of Genesis, they cannot accept the conclusions of evolution based on the geologic column. Nor can they accept that the days in the Genesis record correspond to geologic periods. So they propose that God reshaped the earth and re-created all life in six literal days after Lucifer’s flood (which produced the fossils); hence the name “ruin-reconstruction.” Satan’s sin supposedly caused this flood, and the resulting judgment upon that sin reduced the previous world to a state of being “without form and void.”

   While the gap theorist may think Lucifer’s flood solves the problem of life before God’s creation recorded in Genesis 1:2 and following, this actually removes the reason for the theory in the first place. If all, or most, of the sediments and fossils were produced quickly in one massive worldwide Lucifer’s flood, then the main evidence that the earth is extremely old no longer exists, because the age of the earth is based on the assumed slow formation of earth’s sediments.

   Also, if the world was reduced to a shapeless, chaotic mess, as gap theorists propose, how could a reasonably ordered assemblage of fossils and sediments remain as evidence? Surely with such chaos the fossil record would have been severely disrupted, if not entirely destroyed. This argument also applies to those who say the fossil record formed over hundreds of millions of years before this so-called Lucifer’s flood, which would have severely rearranged things.

4. The gap theory does away with the evidence for the historical event of the global Flood.

   If the fossil record was formed by Lucifer’s flood, then what did the global Flood of Noah’s day do? On this point the gap theorist is forced to conclude that the global Flood must have left virtually no trace. To be consistent, the gap theorist would also have to defend that the global Flood was a local event. Custance, one of the major proponents of the gap theory, did just that, and he even published a paper defending a local flood.¹⁹

   Genesis, however, depicts the global Flood as a judgment for man’s sin (Genesis 6). Water flooded the earth for over a year (Genesis 6:17, 7:19–24) and only eight people, along with two of every kind (and seven of some) of air-breathing, land-dwelling animal survived (Genesis 7:23). It is more consistent with the whole framework of Scripture to attribute most fossils to the global Flood of Noah’s day rather than to resort to a strained interpretation of the fall of Satan²⁰ and a totally speculative catastrophe that contributes nothing to biblical understanding or to science.

   Sadly, in relegating the fossil record to the supposed gap, gappists have removed the evidence of God’s judgment in the Flood, which is the basis for God’s warning of judgment to come (2 Peter 3:2–14).

5. The gap theo
   rist ignores the evidence for a young earth.

   The true gap theorist also ignores evidence consistent with an earth fewer than 10,000 years of age. There is much evidence for this—the decay and rapid reversals of the earth’s magnetic field, the amount of salt in the oceans, the wind-up of spiral galaxies, and much more.²¹

6. The gap theory fails to accommodate standard uniformitarian geology with its long ages.

   Today’s uniformitarian geologists allow for no worldwide flood of any kind—the imaginary Lucifer’s flood or the historical Flood of Noah’s day. They also recognize no break between the supposed former created world and the current recreated world.

7. Most importantly, the gap theory undermines the gospel at its foundations.

   By accepting an ancient age for the earth (based on the standard uniformitarian interpretation of the geologic column), gap theorists leave the evolutionary system intact (which by their own assumptions they oppose).

   Even worse, they must also theorize that Romans 5:12 and Genesis 3:3 refer only to spiritual death. But this contradicts other scriptures, such as 1 Corinthians 15 and Genesis 3:22–23. These passages tell us that Adam’s sin led to physical death, as well as spiritual death. In 1 Corinthians 15 the death of the Last Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) is compared with the death of the first Adam. Jesus suffered physical death for man’s sin, because Adam, the first man, died physically because of sin.

   In cursing man with physical death, God also provided a way to redeem man through the person of His Son Jesus Christ, who suffered the curse of death on the Cross for us. He tasted “death for everyone” according to Hebrews 2:9. He took the penalty that should rightly have been ours at the hands of the Righteous Judge, and bore it in His own body on the Cross. Jesus Christ tasted death for all mankind, and He defeated death when He rose from the grave three days later. Men can be free from eternal death in hell if they believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They then are received back to God to spend eternity with Him. That is the message of Christianity.

   To believe there was death before Adam’s sin destroys the basis of the Christian message. The Bible states that man’s rebellious actions led to death and the corruption of the universe, but the gap theory undermines the reason that man needs a Savior.

Continued…