The traditional gap theory version says that the creation week’s First Day does not begin until Genesis 1:3 and a gap of eons of time existed between verse 1 and verse 2 in Genesis. This theory’s many advocates speculate that God created life on a pre-human Earth before He destroyed life on the planet when the Earth became “waste and void” (Genesis 1:2). Thomas Chalmers invented the Genesis Creation Gap Theory as a response to scientific research saying the planet Earth was old. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847 CE), who was a notable Scottish theologian and first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, was perhaps the man most responsible for the gap theory. The Dutchman Episcopius (1583-1643CE) made obscure writings to the gap theory, and someone recorded this idea from Chalmers’ lectures in 1814. Rev. William Buckland, a geologist, did much to popularize the idea. Famous supporters of the gap theory include author G.H Pember, Rev. Clarence Larkin, and scholar Arthur C. Custance.
Biblical and scientific evidence does not support the Genesis creation gap theory. The Holy Scriptures does not describe Satan’s fall (Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28: 13-19, Luke 10:18 and Revelation 12:9) until after the creation week (Genesis chapters 1 and 2). The weight of scientific evidence reveals only one major global cataclysmic flood in Earth’s primeval history, which was Noah’s global flood in Genesis chapters 7 and 8). Furthermore, the modern versions of the gap theory argue that the creation week’s First Day began in Genesis 1:3 and a gap of time existed between Genesis verses 1 and 2. In other words, God created the universe roughly 14 billion years ago before creating the planet Earth around 4,600,000,000 years ago prior to renovating the Earth’s surface and placing life on the planet Earth around six or seven thousand years ago. Many gap theorists argue that the Creation Week days were normal 24-hour solar days, while a few gap theorists argue that each creation day was either a thousand years (Psalm 90, 2-Peter 3:8) or a year in duration (Daniel 9, Ezekiel 4). Gap theorists also believe that a pre-human population occupied the Earth before the creation of Adam and Eve (Genesis chapters 1 and 2). For many gap theorists, these people were Homo Erectus and Neanderthal populations.
Analysis of the Genesis Creation Gap Theory
The Genesis Creation Gap theory supports elements of modern scientific explanations about the subject of origins. The primary reason for its agreement with modern science is that many Gap theorists fail to conduct critical analysis on the philosophical naturalism decorating modern scientific explanations. Gap theory creationism is inconsistent because it rejects Darwinism and evolutionism, but it embraces the deep time associated with these naturalistic worldviews. While the Holy Scriptures do not offer any date for the origin of the universe, planet Earth, and life, the language of Scripture appear to show a recent history for the creation week. For example, the chronologies in Genesis 5 and 11 and elsewhere in Scripture show a creation date of 4,001 BCE (Hebrew Masoretic Text), or 5554 BCE (Greek Septuagint LXX). Even if the biblical chronologies in Genesis 5 and 11 contain time gaps between the pre-flood patriarchs, then the biblical history could only realistically go back to 8,000 BCE.
Furthermore, Gap theory creationism ignores the plethora of evidences destroying evolution’s deep time requirements. First, scientists have found DNA in ‘ancient’ fossils. When scientists extract DNA from bacteria, which is supposed to be 425 million years old, then this extraction brings into question that age, because DNA cannot last longer than 1,000,000 years. Second, the Lazarus bacteria is bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, which suggests the salt is not millions of years old. Third, the decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly harmful mutations supports a recent creation history for humanity. Each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago. Fourth, the data for ‘mitochondrial Eve’ are consistent with a common origin of all humans several thousand years ago. Likewise, very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human Y-chromosome around the world is consistent with a recent origin for humanity, which is thousands and not millions of years. Fifth, the finding of pliable blood vessels, blood cells, animal proteins, and even DNA in dinosaur bone is consistent with an age of thousands of years for the fossils, but not the 65 plus million years, which paleontologists often claim.
In addition, Gap theory Creationists argue that Homo-Erectus and Homo-Neanderthals populations are not human, but the weight of scientific evidence indicates these people are just as human as Homo-Sapiens. Anthropologists have found no significant differences in the anatomy of Homo-Erectus, Homo Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens. Homo-Erectus had a human body, but evolutionist like to point out that he had a different skull from modern humans. However, the Journal of Science back in October of 2013 reported that scientists found Homo erectus skulls in Georgia, which is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The skulls show how different the Homo erectus people can look. Some modern Human skulls are very similar in appearance to Homo erectus. In 2002, when scientists did a study on modern day Aborigines living in Australia, they found that the shape of some Aborigines’ skulls had 14 of the 17 traits very similar to Homo erectus skulls. Thus, it looks like Homo erectus people are clearly fully human. Homo erectus people invented the tools for making fire, while Neanderthals are famous for burying their dead.
Ever since the discovery of the first Neanderthal remains in 1856, scientists have debated how to classify these mysterious, quite human-like creatures. Until recently, many evolutionists were confident that Neanderthals were not fully human and they regarded them as a sub-human species called Homo Neanderthals. However, recent genetic research shows that modern humans and Neandertals interbred, suggesting that Neandertals and people living today should be classified as the same species. After sequencing the Neanderthal genome, the world’s leading authority on ‘ancient’ DNA, Svante Paäbo, concluded: “Many would say that a species is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring with each other and cannot do so with members of other groups. From that perspective we had shown that Neanderthals and modern humans were the same species.” Neanderthals were humans, not ape-men, contrary to many years of evolutionary mythology. The human remains of Homo-erectus and Homo Neanderthals belong to human beings who were living during the early post-flood era.
Finally, Gap theory creationism is a poor attempt to explain the origination of evil and the fall of Satan. The Holy Scriptures are silent about when God created Lucifer who transformed himself into Satan before his satanic rebellion against God. Gap theorists believe that passages from Jeremiah 4:23 and Isaiah 24:11 reveal a major catastrophe when Lucifer rebelled generations before the creation week (Genesis chapters 1and 2), but the evidence for this interpretation originates from human imagination rather than from careful biblical analysis and scientific observations. The details in the context of Isaiah 24 and Jeremiah 4, where the words TOHU WA BOHU are used, make judgment clear. However, the context of Genesis 1:2 is not one of judgment, but the unformed and unfilled conditions at the beginning of the creation week. Gap theory creationism exists because many gap theorists are brilli
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