I have heard of it but also know little about it.
My take on it....
Gen 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the
surface of the waters....
Looking up the Greek meanings, Formless (“without form” in the KJV) means
empty, nothing, nothingness.
Void: undistinguishable ruin, emptiness.
If that’s the case from vs. 2, what could have lived there? The planet
was covered with water. What could have lived there in the darkness?
Plants didn’t exist, He hadn’t created them yet. Nor could they have any
soil, therefore no fossils either. This was the first day of creation.
Light was also created on the first day.
The word “and”, I feel, is important as it joins vs. 1 & 2 together. I
don’t see how millions of years could fit in there.
Let’s say there were millions of years between vs. 1&2. What would it
matter, there still wouldn’t be any fossils or plant life since there is
no light to produce any life. Land and vegetation weren’t created until
the 3rd day. Critters were created on the 5th day.
Gen 3:21: And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife
and clothed them.
After Adam and Eve got booted out of the garden, this is the first
physical death. Skin means hide or leather, which would have come from an
animal that God slaughtered for the skin. Up until this time nothing had
died, except the spiritual connection with God after they ate the
forbidden fruit. Hence the need for Jesus to come and reconcile us back
to God.
Problems with the gap theory:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-gaptheory-problems.htmlFrom the Christiananswers.net website...
Pember's struggle with long “geologic ages” has been the struggle of many
Christians, ever since the idea of millions of years for the fossil
record became popular in the early 19th century. Many respected Christian
leaders of today wrestle with this same issue.
Recounting Pember's struggle helps us understand the implications of the
gap theory. The following is based on or quoted from his book Earth's
Earliest Ages.
Pember, like today's conservative Christians, defended the authority of
Scripture. He was adamant that one had to start from Scripture alone, and
not bring preconceived ideas to Scripture, thus changing its meaning. He
boldly chastened people who came to the Bible “filled with myths,
philosophies, and prejudices, which they could not altogether throw off,
but retained, in part at least, and mingled—quite unwillingly,
perhaps—with the truth of God” (page 5). He describes how the Church is
weakened when man's philosophies are used to interpret God's Word:
For, by skillfully blending their own systems with the truths of
Scripture, they so bewildered the minds of the multitude that but few
retained the power of distinguishing the revelation of God from the
craftily interwoven teachings of men.
And the result is that inconsistent and unsound interpretations have been
handed down from generation to generation, and received as if they were
integral parts of the Scriptures themselves; while any texts which seemed
violently opposed were allegorized, spiritualized, or explained away,
till they ceased to be troublesome, or perchance, were even made
subservient (page
.
He then warns Christians:
For, if we be observant and honest, we must often ourselves feel the
difficulty of approaching the sacred writings without bias, seeing that
we bring with us a number of stereotyped ideas, which we have received as
absolutely certain, and never think of testing, but only seek to
confirm.[11] (end of quote)
{I see this statement as going along with what Fodder said has gotten him off of the belief that the Bible is inspired; too much human intervention in what the Bible really says.)
I don’t see how a million year theory can fit in the beginning of
creation, especially with the order in which God created earth and the
things on it.
If that was the case, where did the waters come from afterwards? Does the
theory explain that God may have just wiped it all clean and started
over? If that’s the case, it wouldn’t hold with the evolution theory as
it doesn’t necessarily support a water event or Noah’s flood. (even
though the earth is covered with water!! Go figure).
I think the quotes above explain it pretty well. People dig into the
Bible with preconceived ideas and try to make them fit into what the
Bible says. I see the gap theory as just that. An idea that is looking
for a place to lite in the Bible, that will bring creationists and
evolutionists together by bringing evolution into a place that they don’t
agree with, making it more agreeable to them. In other words, twisting,
or adding to, scripture so they will believe it.
2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but
wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves
teachers in accordance to their own desires,
The gap theory just doesn’t jive.
FOTD, I'm sorry your thread got off topic. It really wasn't intended to
go this way, honest!
quote:
There was a scifi book about a moon landing finding the remains
of an earth astronaut...
I saw a cartoon of a couple of astronauts looking over a woman laying
prone on the face of the moon and one of them said "It's Alice Cramden"
At least I thought it was funny.[
]