Which of the following is correct?
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:1-2)
or
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was ruined and desolate; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:1-2)
If
you chose the second version, you
would agree with the Gap Theorists who also insert the
following story between the two verses to justify their
word change and the meaning:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Gen 1:1)
And the
earth’s was in a perfect state
and God
gave Lucifer rule and reign over
it. But
because of his rebellion, God
destroyed
and wasted his original
creation.
And the earth became ruined and desolate; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:2)
How did this come
about?
Good
question my friend, for that, the gappist turns to
“For thus
saith the LORD that
created the
heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath
established it,
he created it not in vain, he formed
it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there
is none else.” (Is 45:18).
I
don’t get it!
You
see it is very clear to the gappist (not to anyone else), that this
proves that
God destroyed his first creation. You see, they say because of
Lucifer’s
rebellion, God destroyed the earth so that
it became vain and it became ruined and desolate! And
that’s why he started again recreating his first destroyed creation,
because he
wanted it to be inhabited by people.
But that’s
ridiculous, the plain reading has the opposite meaning!
I
agree with you and so do countless saints over the past two thousand
years. The
common sense reading is this: God didn’t just simply create the earth
out of
vanity, but he made it to be inhabited by people.
The Bible
meaning for he created it not in vain is that God created a perfect earth,
and rather than it just be for his vanity or something pretty full of
animals,
there was a purpose in that he formed it to be inhabited with people ie
he
didn’t want it to be in vain. The opposite word to ‘vain’ is
‘inhabited’. The
phrase does not speak of a condition of the earth but an intention by
God.
The
gappists’ meaning is that as God didn’t
create an earth of chaos, it must have become a ruined waste.
Where would such a
fantasy come from?
Now
of course you couldn’t just dream this up – you’d have to be taught it.
The
originator, Thomas Chalmers, a
Scottish Presbyterian
Moderator (and who better than a saved man to be satan’s dupe), was a Freemason and a religious Gnostic who
was well versed with the
Freemasonry beliefs of Hindu cosmic
cycles.
In
fact all religions, other than Christianity, promote the multiple
‘ruin-reconstruction cycles’ of the earth – as evidenced by the latest
Mayan
fiasco about December 2012.
That’s
why God got Moses to counteract this pagan belief, by writing the
straight
forward and linear account of creation of no chaos and no re-creation!
Chalmers,
while struggling to marry the newly pronounced and overwhelming tsunami
of the
‘truths’ of evolution in the mid 1800’s, with a literal six day
creation, ‘an
angel of light’ appeared (2Cor 11:14), and gave him a hand.
But what about
‘without form and void’ in Jer 4:23? Doesn’t it refer to the gap?
Jeremiah’s
prophecy refers to the upcoming destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by
the
Babylonian armies and does not refer
to God destroying his perfect creation in Genesis.
The
phrase ‘without form and void’ appears to imply some connection between
Gen 1:2
and Jer 4:23, however the ‘earth’
mentioned in the Jeremiah chapter (see Jeremiah 4:7, 20, 27) is the local
land of Judah and not the whole
earth as in the Genesis
account.
Jeremiah
4:23-29
23. I
beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void;
and the
heavens, and they had no light.
24.
I beheld the mountains,
and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills
moved lightly.
25.
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and
all the birds of the heavens were fled.
26. I
beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a
wilderness, and all
the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of
the
LORD, and by his fierce anger.
27. For
thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate;
yet will I not make a full end.
28. For
this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens
above be black; because I have
spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn
back
from it.
29. The
whole city shall flee for the noise
of the horsemen and
bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every
city
shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein. (Jer 4:23-26,27-29)
The plain reading of Jeremiah 4:23-26,27-29
1. Jeremiah says that I beheld, and, lo,
there was no man –
he doesn’t say that man hadn’t been created at this time
– simply there
were no men to be found and verse 29 explains why. ‘The whole city shall flee
for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks:
every city shall be forsaken,
and not a man dwell therein.’
Why can’t Jeremiah see any men? They’ve have fled the city because of the impending threat and dreadful noise of an invading army.
2. The phrase ‘all the birds of the heavens were fled’ doesn’t mean that birds hadn’t been created at this time.
The birds had
simply flown away. Why? Because of the approaching ‘noise
of the horsemen and bowmen’ in v29.
3. The phrase ‘they had no light’ doesn’t mean that ‘light’ hadn’t been created, but only that they had none ie no fires, candles or lanterns. Why? Similar to an air raid, a city puts out all lights hoping the bombs won’t hit. Here in Jeremiah, the people have fled under cover of darkness, not wanting to show the invading army where they are.
4.
The phrase ‘I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was
without
form, and void’ of Jeremiah is not
the same as the use in Genesis 1:2.
In
Jeremiah, there are ‘mountains’
and ‘hills’
so it can’t be the ‘without form’
of Genesis 1:2 which is formless water.
The ‘without
form’ of Jeremiah
is the description of the landscape under cover of darkness – there
being no
light and the heavens above being black. The whole vision appears
as ‘formless landscape’ to Jeremiah.
The use of
the word ‘void’ here, simply means empty as the people
have fled from the
invading army.
5. The phrase
’all the cities thereof were broken
down’ doesn’t refer to a pre-Adamite
civilisation. The cities referred to here were broken down as the
result of the
invading army that caused their destruction.
But don’t Scofield,
Larkin and Ruckman believe it!
I
am aware they do.
Conclusion…
Marc Bates,
in 2000, wrote the following:
“In
a famous speech given by Winston Churchill in 1941, he describes the
heroics of
the pilots that won the battle of
Britain as ‘their finest hour’. Now
when I (Marc Bates), talk about the heroics of my favourite football
team (in 2000) as ‘their finest hour’, everyone
knows the
allusion I am referring to.
But
the gappist would have us believe
that Winston Churchill was
referring to my football team when he used the term ‘their
finest hour.’
Sadly,
you can make the Bible say anything you want it to say.
Study to shew thyself approved unto
God, a workman that needeth
dividing the word of truth.
(2 Timothy 2:15)
Harley Hitchcock
**********************************
Australian
Bible Ministries, PO
Box 5058 Mt. Gravatt East, 4122 Qld, Australia
www.AustralianBibleMinistries.com
