Expert: Tom Smith - 8/2/2004

Question
What can you tell me about the so called gap theory. Do you believe in the literal 7 day creation as told in the bible? Do you believe that the KJV is our every word Bible?

Answer
You have asked several questions. let me try to address these one at a time:

QUESTION #1: GAP THEORY

This theory is based upon two verses, which are:

Gen 1:1-3
1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
NKJV

Those who promote this theory believ that the proper translation is that the earth "became" without form, thus suggesting order prior to that point in time. The basic ideas behind it are:

a) There was a creation prior to Genesis 1.
b) That creation became evil and was destroyed.
c) The dinosaurs and other prehistoric anuimals were part of that destruction.
d) Genesis presents the creation story of the second creation.

The problems with this are numerous, for example:

1) The whole theory is based upon the assumption that something existed between these two verse because of an assumption in translation of one or two words. This whole theory is therefore based, at best upon assumption and the absence of scripture, rather than anything in scripture to substantiate the position.

Arguing on the absence of scripture allows us to believe anything which scripture does not say, which means that we can virtually let our imagination run wild. The Bible warns us not to go beyond what is written (1 Cor 4:6) which should in fact be common sense. If indeed the assumption of the translation of Gen 1:2 was "became", then the best that one could rightly say base upon scripture is that we do not know what happened before it became rather than trying to build an argument on absence of scripture.

Even if "became" were the right interpretation, what came before could refer to the creation of the earth by God, not necessarily a pre-existent creation of man and animals.

2) The gap theory is a denial of the gospel. The gospel says that man was created perfect and that death and imperfection entered the world through Adam as a result of sin. This is not only in the book of Genesis but also found in Roman 5:14 and 1 Cor 15:22 amongst others. 1 Cor 15:22 says that death began with Adam.

For the gap theory to be true, sin and death would have started before Adam was created and the world would have been wiped out.

The Bible is consistent on this point and the gap theory is not consistent with the Bible.

3) The Gap theory tells us that God destroyed the world or allowed it to be destroyed. That is inconsistent with the character of God that we see in the Bible. When God saw the wicknedness of the world, he did not destroy everyone, but kept a remnant. When Israel rebelled against God, he retained a rememnant. When the world was in sin and rebellion against God, He sent His son to die on the cross to take away the sins of those who would turn to Him and accept that sacrifice as payment for their sins, thus creating a remnant.

Even when man was not faithful, God was faithful and always retained a remnant.

QUESTION #2: Do you believe in the literal 7 day creation as told in the bible?

Yes I do. let me tell you a bit about my background. I have a degree in applied science, therefore I have a great deal of respect to what science has found and what science teaches. I used to be a strong believer in evolution and as a Christian eventually my views "evolved" into theistic evolution - the belief that God used evolution as the means to creation. I was often in disgareements with one side of the other regarding that view and was not well prepared to argue the point so I decided to take the time to do the research on both sides to show how the Bible and evolution could be reconciled in favour of theistic evolution. I could not comprehend how anyone to believe in the 7 day creation account.

When I did my research, I was shocked to find that the more that one looked either into the Bible or science, the stronger the argument was against evolution. Numerous evolutionists have found similar problems in evolution and indeed in his book that started the whole thing, Darwin noted that the fossil record was the biggest argument against evoltuion. Other the following years, I have been absolutely amazed at how much science provides evidence of the creation of the world as recorded in Gensis. I don't think that we can ever prove by science one theory or thee other, but for those who believe in what the Bible has to say, I can see no other option.

Here are some things to consider:

1) If indeed the 7 day creation account of Genesis is not accurate, then this must be a fable or myth or story. In the Nt when Jesus tells a parable, you can always find the start and the end. Try to find out the end in Genesis.

2) In the NT, the creation story and Adam specifically are mention as being a faithful and accurate account and Adam as being an actual person. Indeed, the whole gospel is based upon this acccount, so again, if we choose to ignore the account, then we find that we effectively deny the gospel.

You may want to check out a website that I put up a few years ago with some interesting snippets on it:

http://www.geocities.com/smithtj.geo/creation.html

There is so much more, but I am so limited in the space available for an answer. I would highly recommend the book by Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box (see the books at the bottom of my webpage). He is a scientist and provides some fascinating arguments against evolution purely from a scientific perspective. He does not support the creation account, nor do I belieev to the best of my knowledge that he is a Christian, but he shows strongly how science along argues that evolution is an impossibility.

QUESTION #3: Do you believe that the KJV is our every word Bible?

I am not entirely sure what you mean by "our every word Bible". I do believe that the KJV is an excellent translation, but one that today we need to be cautious with because of some variations in the meanings of words over the past 400 years. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend it. I personally use the NKJV which I believe carries with it the same strength of the KJV but which is easier to read in today's English