Gap Theory Phases of the Earth
I accepted the Gap Theory long before I came to the
Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Arkansas. It has been around since Hector was a
pup. I attended the original Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in the late forties and
early fifties while Dr. Bogard was still living, and entered my military and
National Security Agency career in 1951.
I was first exposed to it while working in Washington from Merrill Unger’s Bible
Handbook. So it was no great leap for me
to listen attentively to what was taught concerning it while I was a student at
the seminary. I again wish to state what
I have said over and over again in this series – the gap theory is just what
the title implies, it is a THEORY, no more and no less, but Genesis 1:1 is not
a THEORY, it is a FACT.
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.
I do not believe man evolved. I believe he was created on a single day, the
sixth day of a restoring of the original creation of God in Genesis 1:1, which
became something other than what God intended when the Devil rebelled against
his authority by attempting to create life forms. I would encourage you to read Prophecy
Updates 148A to 148E to gain the background needed to follow what I am about to
present in this Update.
I believe there have been two great floods on the
present earth that God originally created, the flood of Noah’s time, and the
flood of Genesis 1:2a.
Genesis 1:2 – And the earth was (hayethah-became)
without form (tohu), and void (bohu); and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
As I have shown in previous updates, the first
sentence in 1:2 states what the earth had become as a result of Satan
attempting to manipulate God’s original creation of 1:1. The word “deep” is a noun that means “abyss,”
and refers to the bottom of a great flood God has sent upon the earth to
destroy Satan’s creation, and the “face” of that great flood is the surface of
its waters that cover all the earth. The
second sentence of 1:2 – “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters,” pictures God hovering over the surface of the waters, which he used to
cover Satan’s maze of confusion. It is
the picture an artist would portray by painting a portrait of a chicken
hovering over her eggs to give protection and her warmth to produce new life
from her eggs she originally laid. This
is the announcement of what is about to follow in the rest of the first chapter
of Genesis, which is a literal six day restoration of the original creation of
God in Genesis 1:1 that had been marred by the activity of Satan. The first great flood in the Bible is not the
flood in the time of Noah, it is the great flood of
Genesis 1:2 that covered all the land surface of the original creation of God.
The earth has gone through several phases of God
dealing with it since he originally created it.
They are as follows:
(1) The Original Earth – Genesis
1:1
(2) The Earth Marred by Satan –
Genesis 1:2
(3) The Earth Reshaped by God –
Genesis 1:3-31
(4) The Earth Cursed by God –
Genesis 6:17,18
(5) The Flood of Noah’s Day –
Genesis 7:23,24
(6) The Present Earth – Genesis
9:15
I believe that God created the earth billions of
years ago. I do not know, nor can I
estimate, when Satan first rebelled against God, but I believe a great gap of
time exists between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2b, and
I also believe that the re-creation by God from Genesis 1:3 onwards was done in
six literal days, not over long periods of time. Please note in Genesis 7:19-24 that only the land based creatures
were totally wiped out in the great flood of Noah’s day. The same was true in the first great flood of
Genesis 1:2, only the creatures dependant upon “the face of the ground” for
their life survival were destroyed.
Genesis 7:23 – And every living substance was
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the
creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the
earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
The sea creatures were not all destroyed completely
in either of the two floods. God did
create (bara’) great whales in the seas in his re-creation. It is interesting that whales are
mammals. It appears that the creatures
of the oceans were not all destroyed by the Genesis 1:2 flood, and that many,
along with some birds that were able to survive the flood, were allowed by God
to bring “forth abundantly, after their
kind,” in order to once again repopulate their domains.
Genesis 1:21 – And God created (bara’) great whales,
and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth
abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw
that it was good.
This would explain why fossil replicas of fish from
the pre-Genesis 1:2b flood were discovered, which perfectly match their
descendant species in the oceans of today.
These fish fossils that match were found in areas of the earth’s land
mass that were once joined together, but tore apart at the time of Satan’s
rebellion against God between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. If you will take world map and look at the
protruding northeastern part of the South American continent, then shift your
eyes across the Atlantic to view the area of greatest curvature in the western
coastline of Africa, you will see how the two continents were once joined
together into a single land mass. The
identical fish fossils from the pre-flood of Genesis 1:2b are found in Africa
and South America where they once joined together. They were separated when the earth began to
break apart from being a single dry land mass at the time of Satan’s rebellion
against God, who created the single dry landmass in Genesis 1:1. Geologists have named the first landmass of
Genesis 1:1 “Pangaea,” which means “all lands.”
The development of plate tectonics principles in the twentieth century
brought a sweeping change in our understanding of the original earth. It was a century in which we ran across,
under, and above the earth, and it was a time when the most fantastic increase
in human understanding of the earth and the universe occurred, an acceleration
that is beyond belief. Now, in these last days of this age, we can understand
many of the tenets of God’s creation that Moses, and those traveling with him,
were not able to grasp in their day, which is the reason God gave them a very
simple account they could accept, but left a fuller understanding in the
linguistic account for us to understand in these last days.
Daniel 12:4 – But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words,
and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased.
Soon after the first truly reliable world maps were
made, geographers noticed that the continents would fit together like a jigsaw
puzzle if they could be moved, but the idea of a mobile crust was not
considered until the knowledge explosion occurred in the early nineteenth
century. As a certified meteorologist, I
became familiar with the work of another man who was my peer in meteorology,
Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist who accepted the theory first advanced in 1908
by American geologist Frank B. Taylor.
The German, Alfred Wegener, gave the first good explanation of why plate
tectonics was valid, by pointing out the similarities in the fossils found on
the coastlines of northeastern Brazil and central sections of the western coast
of Africa. His evidence was published in
a 1915 book with the title, “The Origins of Continents and Oceans.” Warner believed that the continents light
granite rock somehow plowed above the denser basalts of the ocean sea floors,
driven by forces related to the rotation of the earth. His theory was not proven until our “running
to and fro” on the ocean sea floor (since the end of World War II), enabled us,
by the development of seismic tomography (created by the earthquake waves
passing through the earth), to see the cracks in the world’s crust. Then the
technology needed to track the historical magnetic paths of polar wandering
through magnetic patterns in the rock strata reversals on the ocean and sea
floors was developed, and we were finally able to accept the tectonic drift of
the continents over a long period of time to be a fact, rather than just a theory.
The dinosaurs, and their fellow land creatures, lived in the age that followed
the fall of Satan in Genesis 1:2, and their extinction occurred suddenly and
abruptly in the flood of Genesis 1:2b, after having flourished for millions of
years. Genesis 1:3 is the beginning of
the description of a literal six day restoration of the fallen creation
following the flood of Genesis 1:2a.
Genesis 1:1-3 - In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness
was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters. [3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
I am beginning to wonder if I will ever complete
this series, but, Lord willing, I will eventually finish. I don’t know if I really want to take the
time to go through the re-creation verses line by line, but if I feel inclined
to do so it will eventually appear in our future Prophecy Updates. If I feel up to it, I may discuss the earth’s
age theory of Bishop Ussher in the next creation update. I believe his theory
first appeared some 23 years after the 1611 edition of the King James Bible,
and, if correct, would have the earth reaching an age of 6,008 years in 2004.