The Modern Creation Trilogy. Dr. Henry M. Morris

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СКАЧАТЬ is no doubt that the angels are intensely interested in God’s great work of salvation (1 Cor. 4:9, 6:3; Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12), but this is not because it was an afterthought on God’s part. Rather, it is because their very purpose in being created was to participate in God’s plan for man: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). Throughout all the Scriptures, they are always thus seen as ministering in some way to man, particularly in relation to man’s salvation and growth in grace.

      Since the angels were created specifically for service to man, there is no reason to suppose that they were created much earlier than man. They were present to “shout for joy” when God “laid the foundations of the earth” (Job 38:7; Ps. 104:4–5). However, this erection of the lands upon foundations, when they had previously been “without form,” probably refers to the work of the third day of creation, when the dry land was made to separate out of the waters: “and God called the dry land Earth” (Gen. 1:10).

      In any case, the angelic rebellion in heaven could have had no effect on the earth and its supposed previous geological ages. Even if, for the sake of argument, it is assumed that Satan’s sin did cause a pre-Adamic cataclysm on earth, that still would not account for the geological ages, with their evolutionary succession of identifying fossils, that had occurred prior to the cataclysm. The whole problem of eons of suffering and death has still not been resolved, for all this occurred not only before Adam sinned, but even, according to the gap theory, before Satan sinned!

      3. Scientific Problems with the Gap Theory

      The pre-Adamic cataclysm supposedly left the earth completely desolate and uninhabited, submerged in a universal ocean and universal darkness (“waste and void, with darkness upon the face of the deep”). There was no light of the sun, no land surfaces, no vegetation, no animal life, even in the seas. Yet, in the fossil-bearing rocks, there seem to be clear evidences that a great abundance of plant and animal life existed all over the pre-world, on the land and in the sea.

      Such a sudden transition from a world teeming with life and activity to one that was utterly ruined and empty, buried in water and darkness, must have required a geological cataclysm of overwhelming magnitude! The whole earth must have literally exploded, perhaps in a great nuclear or volcanic holocaust, destroying all life, causing all land surfaces to slide into the ocean, and filling the skies with such clouds of smoke and debris as to actually blot out the sun.

      The problem is this: the pre-Adamic cataclysm has been postulated mainly as a means of reconciling the Bible with geology, but there is not the slightest evidence in the orthodox system of historical geology for such a cataclysm! No geologist accepts the gap theory for this very reason.

      The whole system of modern geology has been built upon the dogma of uniformitarianism, not catastrophism. And it is the resulting system of geological ages that the gap theory attempts to pigeonhole between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. One cannot have his cake and also eat it! The geological strata can be explained in terms either of global catastrophism or of uniformitarianism, but not of both together. If the strata were formed by a universal pre-Adamic cataclysm, then there remains no evidence for the geological ages, and , therefore, no need for the gap theory as far as the antiquity of the earth is concerned. One cannot harmonize the geological ages with the Bible by eliminating them!

      It should be emphasized as strongly as possible that orthodox geology has no place for worldwide cataclysms. The strata are supposed to be explained by uniformity, by continuity of the processes of the past with those of the present. A worldwide cataclysm that could lead to the condition described in Genesis 1:2 simply does not exist in the standard system of geological ages, and it is unrealistic to identify the ice age or any other such local or regional geological feature with a cataclysm of such universal scope. Such a destructive cataclysm would have completely devastated and disintegrated the sedimentary strata and the fossils that are used as the evidence proving the geological ages.

      If, for the sake of argument, it is supposed that there was such a cataclysm but that by some miracle it left the previously deposited strata intact and undisturbed, one still faces the formidable problem of the relation between the fossil world and the present world. That is, the animals and plants preserved as fossils from the world before the cataclysm are in many cases practically identical with those in the present world. In fact, most of the kinds of organisms found in the world today have also been found in the fossils (often larger and more highly developed than their modern counterparts, but nevertheless of the same basic kinds). This is true even of human fossils, and of the various hominid forms suggested as possible precursors of man. This is one reason that various writers on the gap theory have postulated the existence of pre-Adamite men.

      The problem is to explain why God would allow a cataclysm to destroy all life on the earth and then proceed to restock it with the same basic forms of life He had just destroyed. The God of the Bible is not capricious.

      There is a great worldwide cataclysm described in the Bible, and that, of course, is the flood of Noah. This cataclysm is described in considerable detail and is frequently mentioned in later parts of the Bible, whereas the supposed pre-Adamic cataclysm is never described at all. The reasons, causes, and effects of the Flood are given. The Flood of water provides a satisfying explanation for the water-deposited sedimentary rocks and fossils and, therefore, eliminates any real scientific need for the geological ages. Thus, consistent advocates of the gap theory always downplay the flood of Noah’s day as either local or of little global consequence.

      Catastrophism does provide the key to the geological ages, not an imagined cataclysm before Genesis 1:2 that supposedly allows us to retain the geological age system, but, rather, the very real Noachian cataclysm which destroys it.

      4. Biblical Problems with the Gap Theory

      The biblical problems that the gap theory entails are no less damaging than the scientific difficulties. The summary statement of Genesis 2:1–3 seems clearly to include the whole universe: “The heavens and the earth . . . all the host of them . . . all his work which God created and made.” Or at least it comprehends the same universe as Genesis 1:1: “The heavens and the earth. . . .” In fact, no reference to the creation of the heavens occurs in the entire chapter except in Genesis 1:1, which therefore is included in the summary of Genesis 2:1.

      This fact is made even clearer in Exodus 20:11: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” If this verse means what it says, then the creation of the heaven and the earth was included within the work of the six days. Therefore, the initial creative act of Genesis 1:1 was a part of God’s work on Day One, and there is no time for any significant “gap” before Genesis 1:2.

      If anyone is impressed by the fact that “made” (Hebrew asah) is used in Exodus 20:11 instead of “created” (Hebrew bara), the phrase “all that in them is” should make it plain that the whole earth structure — not just the earth’s surface — is included in the entities that were “made” in the six days. The gap theory, on the other hand, attributes most of the earth’s crust, including the sedimentary rocks and their fossil contents, to the pre-world, and assumes that they remained in place during the great cataclysm and the subsequent six-day period of “re-creation.” This view obviously contradicts the comprehensive statement of Exodus 20:11, regardless of whether asah is used in this verse (as it often is when God is the subject) to express essentially the same meaning as bara. In any case, it does not mean “re-made,” as the gap theory requires.

      Similarly, God’s evaluation of “all that he had made” as “very good” (Gen. 1:31) is strange and grotesque if the sedimentary rocks under the feet of Adam and Eve were at the same time filled with the fossilized remains of billions of years of suffering and death, so that almost everywhere man would look on the earth, he would encounter this vast graveyard. It could hardly look “very good” to men; СКАЧАТЬ