The Gap Theory

Originally posted by sonship

If I had deleted those two lines you probably would have objected too. There is a reason for putting text in bold. You need to learn that. I hope I can educate you and I apologize for the stupid remark.

I withdraw my retort on stupidity.
And also I have not yet found the aggressive evolution things about dinos comming off the ark. So u ...[text shortened]... in Eden. Yet fully representing Satan, Antichrist may be the one spoken of in verse 17. [/quote]

YouTube

Originally posted by RJHinds
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyVZOvkvso4

Originally posted by sonship
[b]Exodus 20:11 - For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is ..."

Amen.

I don't have time for any YouTube on that tonight. But I say Amen to Exodus 20:11. In six days God MADE [ asah ] heaven and earth ...[/b]

YouTube

Originally posted by RJHinds
Okay skip that one. Here is a shorter video:

Gap Theory Disproved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJEQHGPWbPA

Originally posted by RJHinds
Okay skip that one. Here is a shorter video:

Gap Theory Disproved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJEQHGPWbPA

At .59 Hovind confuses Gap Theory with Day Age Theory. Or he somewhat lumps them together in what I feel is a kind of "guilt by association" move.
At about 1:19 he refers to what I guess some gap theorist said about 2 Peter 3:8. His reference to 2 Peter 3:8 says nothing about creation but means time doesn't mean anything to God. His words.

I agree that 2 Peter 3:8 is not about creation and probably should not be used to talk about creation in Genesis per se. However, it is significant that TIME to God is entirely viewed differently from us. And that could have an effect on our bafflement at big time which is not baffling to God.

After this Hovind speaks to God not being limited or locked in by time.
Well he wants to use this argument to debunk a gap between v1 and v2.
Curiously he doesn't see the same logic can be used to object to knowing all time spans and thus derailing Ussher's 6,000 year old universe.

This (TIME to God) argument, to Hovind, is good for YEC but no one else.

I'm almost half way through. Kent Hovind is entertaining. I'll say that for him. He is kind of fun to listen to with his wit. But I don't think I'll watch to the end in this manner tonight.

If you think there is something there that really I have to address to teach a preadamic age, tell me in your own words. But we have probably been through it.

Originally posted by sonship
At .09 Hovind says that Gap Theory was invented by Thomas Chalmers.
That is false. Chalmers wrote to popularize a long held viewpoint.
Chalmers did NOT invent it.

First error.

The rest of it I really don't want to watch. I'd rather you bring me his arguments and YOU try them on me. But I think you have already discovered that Kent Hovind type ...[text shortened]... o something from there YOU think really deserves my reply, if by now I have not already done so.

Originally posted by sonship
At .59 Hovind confuses Gap Theory with Day Age Theory. Or he somewhat lumps them together in what I feel is a kind of "guilt by association" move.
At about 1:19 he refers to what I guess some gap theorist said about 2 Peter 3:8. His reference to 2 Peter 3:8 says nothing about creation but means time doesn't mean anything to God. His words.

I agree th ...[text shortened]... dress to teach a preadamic age, tell me in your own words. But we have probably been through it.

Originally posted by RJHinds
What does it matter who invented it? Somebody invented it. That is the point.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I was just trying to help you eliminate a false belief, like I did with the pre-tribulation rapture. If you wish to continue to believe a lie then that is up to you.

I was just trying to help you eliminate a false belief, like I did with the pre-tribulation rapture. If you wish to continue to believe a lie then that is up to you.

If you wish to continue to believe a lie then that is up to you.

I was just trying to help you eliminate a false belief, like I did with the pre-tribulation rapture.

Many good Christians think that Genesis 1:1 is the subject of the first two chapters of Genesis. They were taught that these two chapters are a record of God's creation, and that chapter 1, verse 1 is the subject. But if verse 1 is the subject, how can verse 2 start with "and"? "And" means that something is going on already, and then something else happens to follow it. "And" is a conjunction which combines two things: the first thing goes and the second thing comes. Even the grammar shows that verse 1 is not the subject, but part of the description. It describes the first event in a series. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and..." This means that after God created, something happened.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth became waste and empty." The Concordant Version of Genesis translates the verse this way: "Yet the earth became a chaos and vacant." The Concordant Version does not say "and"; it says "yet." "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Yet the earth became a chaos and vacant." A chaos is a mess. The earth became a chaos—waste and vacant. If you build some apartments and no one dwells in them, they are vacant. We may render this phrase as either "a chaos and vacant" or "waste and empty." Something happened between verse 1 and verse 2 which caused the earth to become waste and empty.

Now we come to the first verse of the first chapter: "In [the] beginning..." In the Bible this phrase, "in the beginning," is used in two ways, the first time in Genesis 1:1 and the second time in John 1:1. The beginning mentioned in John 1:1 was earlier than the beginning mentioned in Genesis. The beginning mentioned by John was the beginning in eternity, a beginning without any beginning. The beginning revealed in Genesis 1 was the beginning of time, which started with God's creation. John refers to eternity, while Genesis refers to time.
2) God Created

In this beginning God created. It is quite interesting to notice that in this sentence the subject "God" is plural and the predicate "created" is singular. Does this mean that there are several Gods? Surely this is a little seed of the Trinity. God is one, but He is triune. In the same chapter (v. 26) He calls Himself "us": God said, "Let us make man." God is one, but the pronoun for Him is "us." We cannot explain. God is one, yet triune. The Triune God came to create.

In Genesis 1 and 2, three different verbs are used concerning God's creation and re-creation: created, made, and formed. To create means to bring something into existence out of nothing. Only God can create. We cannot create. We can only make. To make means to take something which exists already and then use it to produce something else. On the first day, God did not create the light nor on the third day did He create the earth, because the light was there already and the earth was buried under the deep waters. On the first day God did not create but He commanded. God said, "Let there be light," and light was there. On the third day, God commanded the buried land to come out of the death waters. That was not an act of creating, but of making. Then, God made man a physical body. That was formation. God formed man with the dust.

God's creation is in verse 1 and God's re-creation begins with verse 3. It doesn't say that God made the heavens, nor that God formed the earth. It says that God created the heavens and the earth.

Originally posted by sonship
[quote] Many good Christians think that Genesis 1:1 is the subject of the first two chapters of Genesis. They were taught that these two chapters are a record of God's creation, and that chapter 1, verse 1 is the subject. But if verse 1 is the subject, how can verse 2 start with "and"? "And" means that something is going on already, and then something else h ...[text shortened]... of [b]The Life Study of Genesis by Witness Lee

http://www.ministrybooks.org/books.cfm?p[/b]

Originally posted by RJHinds

We already went over this and I explained this from the Hebrew and also from the Greek Septuagint. Genesis 1:1 could be better described as a "TOPIC SENTENCE" of a paragraph that gives the "SUBJECT" of the paragraph. Then follows the "DETAIL SENTENCES" that provide additional details on the subject. This is demonstrated and explained in the following link:

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/inconcert/assets/pdf/McWhorter_0321850378_C05.pdf

Jameisom, R. , Commentary: Critical and Expository: Genesis - Deuteronomy, (Nisbet, London, 1871, p. 3): the author notes that in many Hebrew manuscripts a mark indicating a pause occurs after Genesis.1,1. "This break between Gen.1.1 and 1.2 is observed even where no verse division exists"

It is important and interesting to observe how the early fathers of the Christian church should seem to have entertained precisely similar views: for St. Gregory Nazianzen, after St. Justin Martyr, supposes an indefinite period between the creation and the first ordering of all things. St. Basil, St. Caesarius, and Origen, are much more explicit. To these might be added Augustine, Theodoeret, Episcopius, and others, whose remarks imply that existence of a considerable interval 'between the creation related in the first verse of genesis, and that of which an account is given in the third and following verses'. Independent character of the opening sentence of Genesis was affirmed by such judicious and learned men as Calvin, Bishop Patrick, and Dr. David Jennings. And 'in some old editions of the English Bible, where there is no division into verses, and in Luther's Bible (Wittenburg, 1557), you have in addition the figure 1 placed against the third verse, as being the beginning of the account of the creation of the first day'. Now these views were formed independently of all geological considerations.

Gray, Rev. James, in his book, The Earth's Antiquity in Harmony With the Mosaic Record of Creation (referred to by William Hoare in a footnote on p. 145 of his book Veracity of the Book of Genesis) takes the view (Chapter IV, p,211, 2nd edition) "that the first verse in Genesis is not to be understood according to the currently entertained notion, as merely giving a summary account of the after-recorded work of the six days, but is an independent proposition enunciating THE CREATION, primordial as to time, - the reference being retrospective rather than prospective". In a subsequent footnote on p. 151, Gray is again quoted (p. 120 and 144 of his work) on Gen. 1.2 as follows: "Such a disturbed condition of terrestrial things is here narrated, as we should naturally conclude would be found after the violent action of one or another of those grand disturbing agents, either of fire, by earthquakes, or of water by deluges, which we know to be Nature's ordinary mighty destroyers and renovators on the earth .... a state following upon the last catastrophe anterior to the period of its divinely recorded re-organization as the abode of man."

"Episcopius and others thought that the creation and fall of the bad angels took place in the interval he has spoken of: and misplaced as such speculations are, still they seem to show that it is natural to suppose that a considerable interval may have taken place between the creation related in the first verse of Genesis and that of which an account is given in the third and following verses."

Originally posted by sonship

We already went over this and I explained this from the Hebrew and also from the Greek Septuagint. Genesis 1:1 could be better described as a "TOPIC SENTENCE" of a paragraph that gives the "SUBJECT" of the paragraph. Then follows the "DETAIL SENTENCES" that provide additional details on the subject. This is demonstrated and explained in the following ...[text shortened]... e third and following verses."

[ see Arthur Custance's book above, pg. 122 ][/b]

INTRODUCTION

"In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. And the earth was without form
and void and darkness was on the face of the deep."

Some difference of opinion about the precise meaning of the original has existed for centuries. A substantial number of Hebrew scholars have held that the wording of verse 2 may be translated in a way which gives the reader a fundamentally different impression as to its meaning. And even the relationship between verse 1 and verse 2 is a matter of continuing debate because this relationship hinges very largely upon how verse 2 is translated.

The importance of establishing its intended meaning does not stem from the fact that if it is interpreted in one particular way it can then be used to resolve certain apparent conflicts between the Mosaic cosmogony and modern geological theory. Its importance stems from the fact that it is a foundation statement; and the foundation statements of any belief system are the more critical as they lie nearer the base of its structure. An error at the end of a long line of reasoning may be very undesirable but it is much less dangerous than an error at the beginning. And in the first three chapters of Genesis we have the basic facts upon which are erected the whole theological superstructure of the Christian faith. Uncertainty here, or misinterpretation, is likely to have repercussions throughout the whole of the rest of the system of belief.

Now, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I must repeat something which I said earlier, namely, that the question of whether Genesis, Chapter one, can be squared with modern geological theory is of secondary importance. I do not for one moment say it is quite un-important. It is important. But the more important thing is, undoubtedly, to determine what Genesis says. Other issues are secondary. My own conclusions as to the meaning of Gen. 1.2 does not accord with that reflected in almost every version published in the last fifty or sixty years. This might seem sufficient reason for discounting it. But it is well to keep the door of inquiry open anyhow, and this is really all that one can hope to achieve by such a study as this.

... This book is written for those who still have an open mind and who do not expect in such questions as these to achieve absolute certainty where we are dealing with an ancient language whose grammar and syntax we still do not understand completely. It is written for those who would like to know something of what is to be said on both sides. There is no question that virtually all the usual authorities quoted at the present time, if they are not against my rendering, at least have not seen fit to recommend it as a preferred alternative, though some certainly admit it.