While most thinking people believe God created everything, there are some professing Christians who are trying to construct a bridge between the fraud of gradualism and the fact of Genesis. However, the two teachings are diametrically opposite each other and are irreconcilable.

Christians who are trying to satisfy unbelievers are erecting a bridge of mist, and all who try to cross are destined to fall into a noxious swamp of disbelief, disobedience, and dismay.  Those sincere, but foolish Christians are doing harm to other Christians as they produce fodder for unbelieving scientists.

Some Christians, trying to accommodate unbelievers, have propounded the “gap theory” to make peace with evolutionists. They explain that they are only using reason to solve the conflicts between the Scripture and science, but too often it appears to be spiritual and intellectual treason, not reason.

Basically those people teach that God created everything, even a pre-Adamic race, possibly billions of years ago. Then a “gap” occurred between Genesis 1:1 and verse 2 when Satan was flung from heaven, followed by physical judgment upon the earth.

During the “gap” all the necessary time would be given to evolutionists so they could patch together their non-scientific, non-scriptural, and non-sensical theory.  Later, much later, God “restored” everything with His six days of creation.

Among many problems with this theory, they have a problem with the world existing billions of years without the sun because it was not created until the fourth day. Not a small problem.

The theory is also not biblical. Professor M. Henkel of the Winona Lake School of Theology asked twenty leading Hebrew scholars if there was any evidence for a gap between verses 1 and 2, and they all replied, “No.”

Proponents of this theory tell us that “without form and void” means “chaotic,” but not so. These are Hebrew words, tohu wabohu that mean “empty and unformed.”  The earth was not ready for man’s habitation. There were no flowers, trees, rivers, grass, etc. It wasn’t finished.

But doesn’t the fact that darkness was upon the face of the deep indicate that sin and judgment had contaminated God’s creation? Not at all, for you must remember that God created light and darkness. Darkness does not always mean evil. What would life be like without darkness?

The Psalmist wrote, “Thou makest darkness, and it is night.” Just as the day has various purposes, so the darkness of night has its purposes. And everything God created was very good.

According to proponents of the gap theory, God’s creation had been cursed at Satan’s fall, millions of His creatures had died and formed into fossils over millions of years, and Satan was now the god of this world. If that were true, how could God affirm that it was “very good”?

Furthermore, Romans 5:12 teaches that disease, death, destruction, and decay resulted from Adam’s fall. (After reading so many evolutionary texts, I believe Adam must have fallen on his head.)

However, if disease, death, destruction, and decay came before Adam, then Paul was wrong. If death is a result of man’s sin, then death had to follow man rather then precede him.

No, the gap theory, while not heresy, is a fairy tale for Christians. Believe it if you want, but it is not taught in Scripture nor does science support it. The gap theory is unscriptural, unscientific, and unnecessary.

Tags: creation, evolution