BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

by

Robert V. McCabe, Th.D.

Fellowship Bible Church2775 Bedford Road

Ann Arbor, MI 48104November 30–December 3, 2006

TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction........................................................................................................1

Part 1: The Nature of Creation.........................................................................2

I. The events of the creation account.........................................................2A. First day, vv. 1–5..............................................................................2B. Second day, vv. 6–8.........................................................................2C. Third day, vv. 9–13..........................................................................3D. Fourth day, vv. 14–19......................................................................3E. Fifth day, vv. 20–23..........................................................................3F. Sixth day, vv. 24–31.........................................................................3

II. The duration of the creation account...................................................5A. Semantic of the singular use of “day”..............................................5B. “Evening” and “morning” as qualifiers of “day”.............................7C. Numeric qualifiers and the singular “day”.......................................7D. Scriptural parallels with “day”.........................................................7E. Sequence of events and “day”..........................................................8

III. The evaluation of the creation account...............................................8

IV. Four observations from the creation account.....................................9A. The supernatural nature of God’s creative activities........................9B. The sudden nature of God’s creative activities................................9C. The functionally mature nature of God’s creative activities............9D. The Creator and his creation............................................................9

Part 2: The Gap Theory and Genesis 1:1–2..................................................10

I. The Gap Theory...................................................................................10A. Description of the Gap Theory.......................................................10B. Evaluation of the Gap Theory........................................................11

II. Young earth creationism.....................................................................25A. Description of YEC........................................................................25B. Support for YEC.............................................................................26C. Problem with YEC.........................................................................30

III. Three Theological Lessons................................................................30A. The Creator-creation distinction....................................................30B. Predestination.................................................................................31C. Perseverance...................................................................................31

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Part 3: Death and Decay in Genesis 3............................................................32

I. Temptation leads to the fall by magnifying disobedience, vv. 1–7......32A. Temptation raises questions about God’s Word, vv. 1–3..............32B. Temptation raises doubt about God’s motives, vv. 4–5.................32C. Temptation brings alienation to God’s standards, vv. 6–7.............32

II. God responds to the fall by announcing judgment, vv. 8–24.............32A. Adam and Eve................................................................................33B. Satan and the serpent......................................................................33C. The animals....................................................................................33D. The plants.......................................................................................33E. The created world as a whole is also subject to the “futility” of the

curse, Romans 8:19–22..................................................................34F. The descendants of Adam and Eve were also affected...................35

III. The fall has a fourfold significance for Biblical Creationism...........36A. Disease, suffering and death were not part of the created world

over which Adam ruled before the fall...........................................36B. Because the created order was cursed (Rom 8:19–22), this means

man’s rule as God’s vice-regent would no longer be peaceful, but would be marked by hostility.........................................................37

C. All cosmologies that have death and decay before the fall are problematic.....................................................................................37

D. As a righteous judge, God had to hold Adam accountable to the standards He had established..........................................................38

Part 4: The Nature of the Noahic Flood.........................................................39

I. Biblical reasons for a universal flood..................................................39A. The depth of the flood, 7:19–20.....................................................39B. The duration of the flood, cf. 7:11 and 8:13–14.............................39C. The geology of the flood, 7:11.......................................................39D. The size of the ark..........................................................................39E. The need of an ark..........................................................................39F. The testimony of the apostle Peter..................................................39G. The purpose of the flood................................................................40

II. God’s involvement with the flood.......................................................40A. The ark’s design.............................................................................40B. God’s care for those in the ark.......................................................41C. God’s uplifting of the ocean floor..................................................42D. God’s releasing the waters above the expanse...............................43E. God’s intervention in the formation of the ocean basins and

mountain ranges.............................................................................43

III. Results from the flood........................................................................44

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A. Climactic changes..........................................................................44B. Dinosaurs........................................................................................44C. Fossils.............................................................................................47D. An ice age following the flood.......................................................47

Part 5: God’s Delight in Creation...................................................................49

I. The first reason why God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s insuppressible glory, vv. 1–4, 31–32..........................49

A. God’s glory is correlated with His greatness, v. 1.........................49B. God’s glory is manifested in His work of creation, vv. 2–4..........49C. God’s glory is insuppressible, vv. 31–32.......................................49

II. The second reason God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s incomparable power, vv. 3–5, 24–25.........................49

A. God’s power is demonstrated by His creation of the.....................49B. God’s power is incomparable.........................................................49

III. The third reason God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s incomprehensible wisdom, vv. 24–25.........................49

A. God’s wisdom is displayed in His creation....................................49B. God’s wisdom is incomprehensible...............................................49

IV. The fourth reason God fully delights in his creation is that creation reflects God’s good pleasure, vv. 31–35............................................49

A. Creation points us beyond itself to the infinite God......................49B. Creation delights the infinite God..................................................49C. Creation with its God-centered focus should move us to fully

delight in its Creator.......................................................................50

Part 6: Two Contrasting World Views..........................................................51

I. Evolution is a religion..........................................................................51A. The nature of evolution..................................................................52B. The assumptions of evolution.........................................................53C. The predictions of evolution...........................................................53D. The importance of evolution as a worldview.................................53E. The results of evolution..................................................................54

II. Creationism is a religion....................................................................54A. The nature of creationism...............................................................55B. The assumptions of creationism.....................................................56C. The predictions of creationism.......................................................59D. The importance of creation as a worldview...................................59E. The results of creationism...............................................................59

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Selected Bibliography......................................................................................61

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IntroductionThe basic tenets of evolution are set forth in this chart.

THE EVOLUTION MODEL

1. Naturalistic origin of all things. Chance, random mutation, natural selection.

2. Net basic increase in complexity over time. Unlimited vertical change.

3. Early history dominated by uniform events. Neo-catastrophism.

The biblical creation model is the antithesis of the evolutionary model as the following chart demonstrates.

THE BIBLICAL CREATION MODEL

1. Special Creation—the triune God supernaturally created all things, including the direct creation of man, in six successive, literal days.

2. The Fall—God supernaturally placed a curse on all creation when Adam disobeyed God in Genesis 3.

3. Universal Flood—God sent a global flood to judge the earth and its inhabitants during Noah’s lifetime.

In this series, we will focus on each of these aspects of the biblical creation model. As such, my emphasis will be on the teaching of the biblical material and this will be divided into six messages:

Message 1: What was the nature of God’s special creation?Message 2: Is there a 'gap' between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2?Message 3: When and how did death become a part of God's created universe?Message 4: What is the nature of and result from the Noahic flood?Message 5: Why does God delight in His special creation?Message 6: What is the significance of creation, the fall, and the flood?

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Part 1: The Nature of CreationAlmost 40 years ago in 1959, 100 years after Charles Darwin first put forth his theory of evolution, Sir Julian Huxley said, “Darwin’s theory… is no longer a theory but a fact. No serious scientist would deny the fact that evolution has occurred, just as he would not deny the fact that the earth goes around the sun” (cited in Sylvia Baker, Bone of Contention, p. 3). Today, evolution is the reigning theory about origins in our public school systems, in the news media, printed materials, etc. However, if this is so prevalent, why are some leading scientists and creationist societies so radically opposed to any form of evolution? Since the early days of Christianity and even in the Old Testament economy, there has always been an influential group among professing believers who have opted for an “in-betweenism,” a path of compromise. Rather than a complete rejection of atheistic evolutionary thought and a full embracing of pure doctrine, some leaders in Christianity have preferred to follow a mediating path between atheistic evolution and bible-believing strict creationism. To maintain the so-called facts of evolution while maintaining a belief in God, many Christian scholars have embraced theories such as theistic evolution or theories of “recreation.” Whether one follows theistic evolution, or one of its offshoots, or a re-creation theory such as the gap theory, or one of its offshoots, both types are an attempt to harmonize the geological data with the Bible. However, if evolution, theistic evolution, or the gap theories are so acceptable, why is it that orthodox Christianity has embraced none of these theories until the last two centuries? Why is it that orthodox Christianity has been unequivocally in support of a young earth? What then is the nature of God’s special creation?

In order to determine the truth on the subject of origins, we need to go back to the One who was there “in the beginning.” We are going to look at the nature of creation as presented in the creation account in Genesis 1. We will examine three items from the creation account.

I. The events of the creation accountThe following is an overview of God’s creative activities as they occurred on each of the six successive days of creation.

A. First day, vv. 1–5God created the heavens with one localized light source and a water-covered earthly sphere. With these three creative activities by God, this also reflects that He created space (heavens), energy (light), and matter (earth).

B. Second day, vv. 6–8God created an expanse, the atmosphere that surrounds the earth, to divide the waters on the earth into an upper and lower level. In light of

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the fact that there was no rain until the Noahic Flood and that it was possible to rain 40 days and 40 nights during this flood, the waters above the expanse may have formed a vapor canopy.

C. Third day, vv. 9–13God told the dry land to appear and the seas to be formed. Subsequently, God commanded the dry land to produce fully functioning, mature plants, and trees.

D. Fourth day, vv. 14–19God created the sun, moon, and stars. God had apparently set up a localized light source on the first day of creation, but this is now replaced with the sun.

E. Fifth day, vv. 20–23God created all sea creatures, including the great creatures, and the birds that fly in the air.

F. Sixth day, vv. 24–31God created the cattle, the beasts of the field, creeping things (includes reptiles and insects), and human beings. The emphasis is on the human beings since they are in God’s image and was designed to be His vice-regents on the earth.

Lest we fail to see how radically, opposed biblical creationism is to evolution, the following chart highlights the contrasts between teachings of evolution and Genesis.

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Evolution’s Teaching Genesis’s Teaching1. Pollinating insects and flowering plants evolved together through mutual benefits.

1. Plants were created on 3rd day and insects on the 6th day. If these days were long ages, how did the flowering plants survive?

2. Stars existed much earlier than the earth.

2. Earth existed before the stars. The earth was created on 1st day and the stars on the 4th day.

3. Man has been carnivorous, or at least omnivorous, from the beginning.

3. Man was originally vegetarian. God did not sanction meat-eating until after the Noahic Flood.

4. Birds evolved from reptiles. 4. Reptiles (“creeping things”) were created on the 6th day after the birds had been created on the 5th day.

5. Fish existed long before the first birds.

5. Both fish and birds were created on the 5th day.

6. Insects evolved long before the first birds.

6. Birds were created a day earlier than insects (part of the “creeping things”). The birds had been created on the 5th day and the insects on the

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6th day.7. Most of the earth’s animals lived and died and became extinct long before man existed.

7. The entire original animal world was created only hours before Adam, at most 48 hours earlier.

8. The first living things were sea organisms.

8. Full-blown land plants were created first.

II. The duration of the creation accountLet me provide five reasons why the days in this passage are twenty-four hours in length.

A. Semantic of the singular use of “day”The Hebrew word translated as “day,” yôm, is always use of a literal day when it is used alone as a singular noun. The word yôm may be translated as “day,” “time,” “year,” or for any extended period of time (HALOT, 1:399–400). From this, we can conclude that the term yôm may be used in a non-extended sense as “day” or in an extended sense such as “time,” “year,” etc. Many have argued that if we take yôm in an extended sense, this will solve our modern problems with harmonizing Scripture with geology. Following this type of thought, science interprets Scripture and not Scripture itself. This defies any legitimate use of Biblical Hebrew, for Hebrew lexicons always connect the use of yôm in Genesis 1:1–2:3 with a normal day (BDB, 398).

What is significant in our discussion of Genesis 1 is that yôm always refers to a normal day when it is used as a singular noun and is not found in a compound grammatical construction (by compound grammatical construction, I am referring to the following types of items: the noun yôm being used with a preposition immediately attached to it, yôm being a part of a longer prepositional construction which has a verbal immediately following it, yôm being a part of the multi-word construction known as the construct-genitive relationship, yôm being used in a compound construction [yôm yôm], see Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. “µ/y,” by Magne Saeboe, 6:14–20; (for a more thorough discussion of these difficulties, please see my article “A Defense of Literal Days in the Creation Week,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 5 [Fall 2000]: 97–123, available at http://www.dbts.edu/dbts/journals/2000/mccabe.pdf).

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The noun yôm is used in the Hebrew Old Testament 2,304 times. Of these, it is used in the singular 1,452 times. Yôm is used in the Pentateuch 668 times. Of these, the singular form is used 425 times. It is used in Genesis 152 times, with 83 of these in the singular (Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. “µ/y,” by J. E. Jenni, 2:526–272). In Genesis 1:1–2:3 yôm is used 14 times, 13 are in the singular and 1 use is in the plural (v. 14). It is used in Genesis 1:5 (twice), 8, 13, 14 (twice), 16, 18, 19, 23, 31; 2:2 (twice) and 2:3. With the exception of 1:14 where yôm is used in the plural and is not a reference to the days of the creation week, yôm is used as a singular noun, without being used in a compound grammatical construction. This type of singular use of day with a non-extended meaning is used consistently in this manner throughout the Old Testament (Hasel, “Days of Creation,” pp. 23–26). The lone plural use of “days” in 1:14 does not contradict our understanding of “day” as a normal day. Its use in 1:14 is consistent with our argument. While the use of the plural “days,” is clearly not a reference to any of the specific days of the creation week, its use in 1:14 has reference specifically to calendrical “days and years.” In fact, this use of “days” in 1:14 is the “stuff” that literal days and literal years are made of: regular 24-hour days! Returning to our point about the 13 uses of “day” in Genesis 1, this

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type of singular use of “day” with a non-extended meaning is used consistently in this manner throughout Genesis, the Pentateuch, and the entire Old Testament to denote literal 24-hour days (Hasel, “Days of Creation,” pp. 23–26).

B. “Evening” and “morning” as qualifiers of “day”The qualifying expression “evening and morning” when used with the term day suggests a literal day. What is significant here is that in every case where Moses summarizes God’s creative work for that day, he qualifies his use of day with “evening and morning” (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). If for argument sake, it is assumed that the days of Genesis 1 were long periods of time, one could substitute geological age for the word day in the verses where it is used in Genesis 1. For example, verse 5 could be translated, “God called the light [day] an age of a million years or more, and He called the darkness night. There was evening and morning, [the first day] an age of a million years or so.” The absurdity of this is obvious. Furthermore, it should be noted that God defines the day in v. 5 as being made up of a day and night (light and darkness) cycle. Thus, Moses used the term day in reference to a twenty-four hour day.

C. Numeric qualifiers and the singular “day”Another reason why day must be a literal day is drawn from the use of a numerical adjective with the word day. In each case where Moses summarizes God’s creative work for that day, the word day is qualified by a numerical adjective, “first day” (v. 5), or “second day” (v. 8). When yôm is used with a numerical adjective in the Old Testament, it is never used in a figurative sense.

D. Scriptural parallels with “day”This understanding of day as a literal day is further substantiated by its parallel use in Exodus 20:11. The context is that of God giving Israel the Decalogue and, in particular, the third commandment about Israel keeping the Sabbath holy. God’s motive for this command (v. 11) was based on the pattern that He had set in the creation week, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.” If the figurative use of day is followed, this verse could be translated like this: “For in six geological ages of a million years or so the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh geological age of a million years or so: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath geological age of a million years or so and hallowed it.” This is reiterated again in Exodus 31:16. Obviously, Moses had six literal days in mind with the seventh day also being a twenty-four hour period.

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E. Sequence of events and “day”The sequence of events in the creation week also demands a literal day. On the third day of creation, God created vegetation with fruit trees and seed-bearing plants (Gen 1:11–12). Much vegetation needs insects for pollination. Insects were not created until the sixth day (vv. 24–25). “If the survival of those types of plants which needed insects for pollination depended on them to generate seeds and to perpetuate themselves, then there would be a serious problem should the creation ‘day’ consist of long ages or aeons. The type of plant life dependent on this type of pollination process without the presence of insects could not have survived for these long periods of time, if ‘day’ were to mean ‘age’ or ‘aeons’” (Hasel, “Days of Creation,” p. 30).

These five reasons strongly support that the days in Genesis are literal days. Moses could not have stated it any more clearly than what we have just seen. How is it that leading evangelical scholars assert that this literal understanding of six normal days is not clear? They must appeal to something outside of the Bible and that something is science. However, we must insist that the biblical evidence is abundantly clear “as James Barr, a renowned Hebrew scholar and Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford University, said in a personal letter on April 23, 1984, ‘So far as I know there is no Professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1 through 11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience;… Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguished all human and animal life except for those in the ark’” (cited by Ken Ham, The Lie, p. 53).

We should notice that these Hebrew or Old Testament scholars at “world-class universities,” to use Barr’s words, almost universally do not accept the truth claims of Scripture. What Barr is asserting is that the plain meaning of the text is clearly recognized by this group of scholars. If this group of scholars who are no friends of orthodox Christianity can recognize the meaning of the text, how in the world can evangelicals who claim to accept the authority of Scripture distort the clear meaning of the Mosaic material?

III. The evaluation of the creation accountOn each of His days of creation, God observes what He had just created and declares it to be “good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). However, when He completes His work on day 6, God uses a superlative to describe the quality of his work. In v. 31 God saw everything that He had made and stated that everything was “very good.” If I call something “very good,” this means that it is superior work to anything that I am familiar; however, when God says that something is “very

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good,” it has a quality that is far superior to what we can even conceive. This is because the LORD is a perfect God.

IV. Four observations from the creation accountFor a fuller development, see Whitcomb, The Early Earth, pp. 21–38.

A. The supernatural nature of God’s creative activities

B. The sudden nature of God’s creative activities

C. The functionally mature nature of God’s creative activitiesWhat then were some of the aspects from the original creation week that were created with a superficial appearance of history. The following chart reflects some of these (Morris, The Young Earth, p. 42).

Some Aspects of a Mature Creation Continents with top soil Plants bearing seed Fruit trees bearing fruit Rocks with various isotopes Stars visible from earth Marine animals adapted to ocean life Birds able to fly Land animals adapted to environment Plants and animal in symbiotic relationships Adam and Eve as adults

How do we respond to the objection that we make God out to be a liar if we maintain that He created the earth with an appearance of age? God has not deceived us if He has told us in His written revelation that He created the earth with an appearance of age. If someone maintains this, they have only themselves to blame for rejecting God’s written revelation. As Whitcomb has stated it: “If Scripture be our standard in all truth, then creation with appearance of age is not deceptive, but glorious” (Early Earth, p. 37).

D. The Creator and his creationGod’s creative activities reflect that He is the self-existent, eternal Creator God. We are the creatures and He is the Creator. As such, all creation must submit to Him as their Lord.

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Part 2: The Gap Theory and Genesis 1:1–2Is there a temporal gap that involved a cataclysmic judgment between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2? Before the development of geology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Christians had explained that the earth’s sedimentary rocks containing fossils of once-living creatures were results of the Noahic Flood (see Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood, p. 90). However, with the rise of scientific geology, the sedimentary strata and fossil remains received a new uniformitarian explanation. Uniformitarianism is a concept that maintains that the present is the key to the past. It maintains that the earth’s present surface features are a result of slow-moving processes of nature that were the same in the past as what is currently observable. Recognizing the challenge that uniformitarianism presented to orthodox Christianity, Thomas Chalmers of Scotland sought to harmonize Scripture and science. In a lecture of 1814, Chalmers set forth that “the detailed history of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis begins at the middle of the second verse” (cited by Taylor, p. 363). Chalmers further explained that Genesis 1:1–2a (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void and darkness was on the face of the deep”) was a reference to a pre-Adamic age that was brought to an end by a great catastrophe that left the earth “formless and void.” The fossil remains provided evidence for this pre-Adamic age (ibid.). Chalmers’s hypothesis provided an accommodation to George Cuvier’s theory that the earth’s strata of fossils were the result of a series of catastrophes, allowing for a tremendous amount of time to be placed between the first two verses of the Bible. Chalmers placed these catastrophes between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. This theory became known as the ruin-restoration theory, or more simply the gap theory. George Pember popularized this with the publication of his Earth’s Earliest Ages in 1907. The gap theory had a great appeal for earlier fundamentalists. Is the gap theory valid? The intention of this lesson is to demonstrate that this theory is incorrect and then to propose what Genesis 1:1–2 is setting forth about the original creation of the earth. This will be concluded with two biblical lessons.

I. The Gap Theory

A. Description of the Gap TheoryAdvocates of the gap theory generally state that Genesis 1:1 reflects an originally perfect heavens and earth created directly by God. This was accomplished at some dateless time in the past. This earth was populated with plants, animals, and a pre-Adamic race of men and was ruled by Satan. Because of the fall of Satan, God judged this world by destroying it with a global flood (Lucifer’s flood). Genesis 1:2 reflects that this fallen world was plunged into a state of complete darkness and became “without form and void.” When the sun’s light and heat were ended, a

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global ice age followed. The fossils from plants, animals, and humans come from this vast amount of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.

B. Evaluation of the Gap Theory

1. The Use of “Create” and “Make” to Support the Gap TheoryAdvocates of the gap theory maintain that “create” (bara’) and “make” (‘asah) have distinct meanings. If Exodus 20:11 (“For in six days the Lord made [‘asah] the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them”) establishes that the chronological limitation of God’s creation in Genesis 1 was six days, then any significant interval of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 would extend beyond the required “six days.” Therefore, either Exodus 20:11 is erroneous or some type of harmonization between Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 20:11 must be set forth. Since gap theorists have generally held to the inerrancy of Scripture, they harmonize the two texts by postulating that “create” and “make” have distinct semantic nuances. This is a necessary distinction if Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning God created [bara’] the heavens and the earth”) is to be harmonized with Exodus 20:11. In light of this, the gap theory rises or falls on the distinctive meanings for “create” and “make.” If these two verbs are semantically distinct, then the gap theory may be biblically defensible. However, if these verbs are used interchangeably, then the gap theory cannot biblically stand. In reality, any concession to an interchangeable use of “create” and “make” irreparably undermines this theory.

According to gap theorists, the verb “create” (bara’) in Genesis 1:1 means to create without the use of any preexisting material. The verb “made” in Exodus 20:11 means to restore something. Thus, Genesis 1:1 refers to creation of the heavens and the earth out of no preexisting material; however, Exodus 20:11 refers to God reshaping the heavens and the earth from previously existing material that had been destroyed. Consequently, God originally created a perfect and complete heavens and earth out of nothing as Genesis 1:1 affirms. Because of Satan’s fall, God judged the earth as reflected in 1:2, and this judgment suggests that there was a gap of time between v. 1 and v. 2. Beginning with 1:3, God began to restore the ruined earth in six, successive literal days. The use of “make” (‘asah) in Exodus 20:11 reflects the same six-day period of restoration as is recorded in Genesis 1:3–31.

While we agree that “create” and “make” have distinct nuances, the gap theorist’s absolute dichotomy superimposed on these verbs cannot be consistently defended in the various creation accounts in

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the Bible. Of the two verbs, “create,” bara’, is used 48 times in the Old Testament (David J. A. Clines, ed. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 5 vols. to date [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993–], 2:38 [hereafter cited as DCH]), and “make,” ‘asah, 2,627 times (NIDOTTE, s.v. “hc[ (I),” by Eugene Carpenter, 3:547). “Create” has a more restrictive semantic range than “make.” When the verb “create” is used in the basic Hebrew verbal form known as the Qal stem, the God of Israel is always its subject and the direct object never refers to the material used with the verb “create.” The verb ‘asah means “do” or “make,” and, judging by its general semantic nature, its range of uses is very broad. As we will contend, the verbs “create” and “make” are both used in creation contexts as references to God’s supernatural creative work. Though it is beyond the scope of this section to present the consistent recognition by lexicographers of the synonymous nature of these two verbs (see the conclusive discussion in Fields, pp. 60–74), all of the Hebrew lexicons that I have examined unequivocally affirm that these verbs are used as virtual synonyms in creation contexts (DCH, 2:258; Koehler and Baumgartner, 2:890; NIDOTTE, s.v. “hc[ (I),” by Eugene

Carpenter, 3:547; TDOT, s.v. “ar;B;, bara’” by Jan Bergman, Helmer Ringgren, Karl-Heinz Bernhardt, G. Johannes Botterweck, 2:246–48; TLOT, s.v. “hc[,” by J. Vollmer, 2:949–50; and

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, s.v. “hc[,” by Thomas E. McComiskey, 2:701). In demonstrating the synonymous nature of these two verbs, we will look at two items.

a. The first item that we should notice is that the same creative activities are governed by both verbs. In Genesis 1:1, the verb “create” governs two objects, “the heavens and the earth.” In Exodus 20:11, God gave the Sabbath command. In this text, Israel was commanded to work “six days,” and to worship and rest on the Sabbath. According to v. 11, the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them.” As in Genesis 1:1, God’s creative work includes “the heavens and the earth.” It is again affirmed that the LORD made the same two objects in Exodus 31:17: “for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth.” Though more details are given in Nehemiah 9:6, the same two objects of God’s creative work are included: “Thou alone art the LORD. Thou hast made the heavens, the heavens of heavens with all their hosts, and the earth and all that is in them” (see also Job 9:9, Pss 95:5; 100:3; Prov 8:22–23, 26). Though some of these texts include more details, my point is that “make,” ‘asah, quite

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readily fits into contexts dealing with God’s original creative activities in Genesis 1:1–31, rather than necessarily fitting into accounts of creation separated by millions or billions of years. These references suggest that “create” and “make” be used interchangeably.

b. To reinforce our point about “create” and “make” being used interchangeably in creation contexts, we need to consider a second item; viz., the use of “create” and “make” together in the same verse or unit of verses. Both verbs are used in Genesis 1:26–27: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make [‘asah] man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ 27And God created [bara’] man in His own image, in the image of God He created [bara’] him; male and female He created [bara’] them.” The interchangeable nature of “make” and “create” is obvious.

Genesis 2:2–3 is another text where only strained circumlocution could be used to deny the synonymous nature of “create” and “make”: “And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done [‘asah]; and He rested on the seventh day from all

His work which He had done [‘asah]. 3Then God blessed the

seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created [bara’] and made [‘asah].” The work done over the first six days of creation are summed up with “created,” bara’, and “made,” ‘asah. These two verses univocally communicate that “create” and “make” are virtual synonyms used for God’s supernatural creative activity on the first six days of creation (for other examples, see Gen 2:4; Isa 41:20; 43:7; 45:7; see also Fields, pp. 65–74). Consequently, the biblical evidence overwhelmingly establishes that “create,” bara’, and “make,” ‘asah, are used as synonyms in creation contexts, and, therefore, the gap theory is indefensible in contending for an absolute semantic dichotomy between these two verbs.

2. A Grammatical Allowance for a Temporal GapSupporters of the gap theory assume that the grammatical conjunction, “and,” waw, connecting Genesis 1:1 with 1:2, allows for a temporal interval between these two verses (see Custance, p. 41; and the citations by Fields, pp. 75–77). Gap theorists generally assume that this conjunction somehow supports or allows for a time interval. Though this argument often receives minimal attention by

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gap theorists, the assumption that it allows for a time interval between v. 1 and v. 2 is, at best, tenuous.

The Hebrew conjunction waw, “and,” is placed at the beginning of Genesis 1:2. This conjunction is very common in Hebrew. It may be translated as “and,” “now,” “but,” “then,” and in a number of other ways, depending on the part of speech to which it is directly attached as well as its immediate syntactical context. Waw may be divided into two broad categories: waw consecutive or waw disjunctive. The waw consecutive is clearly identifiable, for it is directly attached to a verb, and it generally expresses sequential action. A waw consecutive begins 1:3. For illustrative purposes, I could represent the first few words of v. 3 like this: “Waw-said God, ‘Let there be light.’” We should notice that waw is directly attached to the verb (the hyphenated words in my translation reflect the word units in the Hebrew text), and the verb stands at the head of the clause with the subject following it. In addition, the creation of a localized source of light in v. 3 is a sequence that follows God’s creation of “the heavens and the earth” in v. 1. In English, the waw in v. 3 is readily translated as “then” (“Then God said, Let there be light’”). As this reflects, the waw consecutive is easily recognized in Hebrew. What is interesting is that the waw consecutive is repeatedly used in virtually every verse of Genesis 1, and often more than once in many verses. For example, a waw consecutive is used twice in v. 3, twice in v. 4, three times in v. 5, twice in v. 6, etc. This reflects that Moses used the waw consecutive to show temporal sequence. If Moses had wanted to show a movement in time, he could have clearly communicated a temporal interval by using the waw consecutive at the head of v. 2. However, the waw consecutive does not appear in Genesis 1 until v. 3.

The waw disjunctive appears at the beginning of v. 2. This type of waw is also easily identifiable. It is always attached to a non-verbal form, such as a substantive, pronoun, or participle; and it stands at the beginning of a clause. For example, we could illustrate the waw disjunctive found at the beginning of v. 2 in this manner: “Waw-the-earth was….” As a waw disjunctive relates to its preceding clause, it can be used in a number of different ways, such as introducing a clause of contrast, reason, etc. In this context, the waw disjunctive is best seen as introducing an explanatory clause, and could be translated as “now” (meaning, “at the time” of its creation in v. 1), or in some similar way. When the waw disjunctive introduces an explanatory clause, it explains an item that had been introduced in the preceding verse. For example, “earth” is used in 1:1 and 1:2: “In the

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beginning God created the heavens and-the-earth. 2At-this-time-the-earth was formless and empty.”

Another example of this use is found in Genesis 2:12. In 2:11 Moses has recorded that the land of Havilah was known for its gold, “The name of the first [river] is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.” He then explains the significance of the gold in v 12: “Now-the-gold of that land is good.” The “now” that introduces v. 12 is the waw disjunctive. This same syntactical construction is also found in Jonah 3:3, “So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now-Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.” Each of the three passages that we have examined contains the waw disjunctive when it introduces an explanatory clause. If Moses had wanted to communicate a movement in sequence, a gap of time, between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, he would have used a waw consecutive as he does many other times in Genesis 1; however, the fact that he uses a waw disjunctive to introduce an explanatory clause indicates that the point of v. 2 is to set forth what the earth was like when God initially created it—it was unformed and unfilled. In the final analysis, the waw disjunctive poses an insurmountable grammatical problem for the gap theory.

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3. Retranslating “Was” as “Became” to Support the Gap TheoryDefenders of the gap theory argue that the verb “was,” in Genesis 1:2, is more accurately translated as “became” or “had become.” If these translation options are more accurate, then the gap theory is linguistically strengthened, at least on this point. By translating “was” as “became,” this indicates a transition in earth’s state has taken place, from its original state of perfection in v. 1 to a subsequent state of judgment in v. 2. The interpretation of hayetah as “became” has received wide support in fundamentalist circles through a note to this effect in the New Scofield Reference Bible (p. 752, note 2). Arthur Custance made a more recent refinement of this translation in a 1970 study. He has argued that the gap theory is better supported if “became” was translated as “had become.” Based upon the statistical analysis in his study, Custance attempted to demonstrate that the active meaning of the verb hayetah (“had become,” “became”) occurred more often than its stative meaning (“is”). In fact, Custance insists that his translation of Genesis 1:2 as “but the earth had become a desolation” (emphasis mine) is the crucial issue with the gap theory (p. 41). The bulk of his book and 13 appendices are devoted to attempting to prove this crucial issue.

Though Custance’s translation of “had become” as opposed to “became” may be somewhat of a refinement for the gap theory, his refinement is in reality a difference without a distinction, for both “had become” and “became” indicate that the earth’s condition had changed from a state of perfection in v. 1 to one of judgment in v. 2. Whether hayetah is translated as “became” or “had become,” neither translation is justifiable in Genesis 1:2. The only translation that can be consistently justified is the translation “was.” This translation can be supported in three ways. First, as I noted above, “was” is in an explanatory clause introduced by a waw disjunctive, connecting this verse with v. 1. In this type of clause, the verb hayetah is invariably translated as “was” (Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, pp. 453–54, sec. 141g, i; for an insightful discussion and support of this translation, see Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, pp. 58–72). The following examples will demonstrate how the verb hayah (third, masculine singular form of hayetah) is translated when it is used in an explanatory clause begun with a waw disjunctive: “Jonah arose and went to Nineveh…. Now Nineveh was [hayetah] an exceedingly great city” (Jon 3:3); “He showed me Joshua…. Now Joshua was [hayah]

clothed with filthy garments (Zech 3:1–3). Second, the translation of hayetah as “was” finds early support from the Septuagint. In their rendering of Genesis 1:2, the Septuagint translators of the Pentateuch

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rendered this Hebrew verb as “was,” the imperfect form of eimi (to “be”). In contrast with this use of eimi, these same translators rendered various forms of hayah with ginomai (to “become”), where it was appropriate with the context (for a more elaborate the discussion on how the Septuagint supports this understanding, see Fields, pp. 97–100). Because of the semantic distinctives of the verbs eimi (to “be”) and ginomai (to “become”), the Septuagint provides early support for the rendering “was.” Third, the vast majority of lexicons and grammars support the rendering as “was” (see the documentation by Fields, pp. 87–112; to his list, we could also add the current edition of HALOT, 1:244; and Waltke and O’Connor, Biblical Hebrew Syntax, pp. 483–84). Whitcomb and Smith have appropriately summarized this evidence: “Hebrew grammars could be cited in abundance to the effect that a nominal clause (with no verb or else with a form hayah) as in Genesis 1:2, is the normal way to describe a state of being without any verbal activity or change of state” (Review of Without Form and Void, p. 134). Therefore, the traditional translation of hayetah as “was” is the most accurate translation.

4. “Formless and Void” as a Reflection of JudgmentFurther support for the gap theory is derived from the phrase “formless and void.” The two Hebrew terms translated as “formless and void,” tohu wabohu, are used together in two other contexts of judgment, Jeremiah 4:23 and Isaiah 34:11. The connection between these passages is reflected in the following quote from Sauer (pp. 231–32):

The Restitution theory emphasizes that this combination [tohu wabohu] of words occurs only in two other passages, and in both of them it means a description that is the result of a divine judgment. Thus Isaiah, after a description of the terrible consequence of the fall of Edom in the day of vengeance, says, “And He (God) shall stretch over it the line of tohu (confusion) and the plummet of bohu (chaos, R.S.V.)” (Isa. 34:11). We are to understand this as meaning that God will use the same care in making the destruction of Edom complete as the architect does in using measuring-line and plumb-line to build a house. The second passage is still more decisive. In this context, Jeremiah describes the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem after their fall, and compares it, according to the explanation of the Restitution theory, with the pre-Adamic destruction. He says, “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was tohu-wa-bohu (waste and void): and the heavens, and they had no light…. I beheld, and lo, there was no

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man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and before His fierce anger” (Jer. 4:23–26). These are the only two passages in Scripture in which—apart from Genesis 1:2—the combination tohu-wa-bohu is found, and in both cases it has the passive meaning of being made desolate and empty. In this Restitution theory sees strong grounds for justifying the acceptance of the same passive meaning as playing at least a role in the third passage.

In light of this quote, Sauer argues that, because Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 reflect clear contexts of judgment, while using the language from Genesis 1:2 (“he compares it…with the pre-Adamic destruction”), the use of “formless and void” in Genesis 1:2 must also reflect a state of judgment and destruction (so also Custance, pp. 166–68).

According to the gap theory, this interpretation of Genesis 1:2 is conclusively proven from Isaiah 45:18 (“For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens [He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create [bara’] it a waste place (tohu), But formed it to be inhabited], ‘I am the LORD, and there is none else.’”). This passage also uses tohu, and is supposedly a judgment context. The editors of the New Scofield Reference Bible have supported this connection between Genesis 1:2 and Isaiah 45:18 with this note (p. 752, note 2): “‘He created it not in vain [tohu].’ This is one of the Scripture passages that suggest the Divine Judgment interpretation of Gen. 1:1–2…. This interpretation views the earth as having been created perfect. After an indefinite period of time…, judgment fell upon the earth and ‘it was [became] without form and void.’” The logic of the gap theory goes something like this: Since Isaiah 45:18 sets forth that God did not create the earth a waste place (tohu) and since Genesis 1:2 states that it was “formless” (according to gap theory, “waste,” tohu), then the earth had to become a formless waste after its original, perfect creation (Fields, p. 122). Consequently, a gap theorist would contend that Genesis 1:2 had to reflect a state of judgment and destruction brought upon the earth as an act of God’s judgment, and not as an activity of His creative power.

The argument stating that “formless and void” denotes a state of judgment is also questionable. Of the two Hebrew words translated “formless and void,” the second word, “void,” bohu, is only used

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three times in the Old Testament, Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11, and Jeremiah 4:23. In each case, it is used in connection with the first term, tohu, “formless.” To determine the significance of this, tohu (“formless”) must be examined. If the argument of the gap theorist is cogent, then tohu should always be used in reference to something inherently reflecting a state of judgment. However, this is not the case. For example, in Job 26:7 Job stated that God “stretcheth out the north over empty space [tohu] and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” The point of this verse is that God stretched out the earth over empty space. There is nothing judgmental or sinister about this. There are other passages where tohu is used to describe the desert or wilderness, places characterized by emptiness (Deut 32:10; Job 6:18; 12:24; Ps 107:40). Consequently, the expression “formless and void” does not demand a state of judgment; this is a neutral expression whose significance must be determined by its context. Unless one reads into the context of Genesis 1 a state of judgment, it appears to be a neutral context. As such, it would be best to interpret this Hebrew expression as meaning “unformed and empty.”

On the surface, it may appear that Isaiah 45:18 negates our taking Genesis 1:2 as an initial, first step of the Creator in Isaiah 45:18. Does Isaiah 45:18 substantiate that Genesis 1:2 is a state of divine judgment, and not a state reflecting God’s creative power? We are convinced that Isaiah 45:18 in its context provides no support for the gap theory. The solution to this superficial problem is found in the last part of v. 18. The remainder of this verse reads, “he [the LORD] formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.” The latter part of v. 18 tells us that God created the earth in order to be inhabited. This is to say, when God says he did “not” create the earth “in vain” (KJV), Isaiah means God did not create the earth in order to leave it in a state that man could not inhabit. Rather than supporting the gap theory, Isaiah 45:18 establishes that the earth, as described in Genesis 1:2, was not designed in its initial stage to be inhabited by man. In commenting on Isaiah 45:18 with its significance for interpreting Genesis 1:2, Tsumura has captured the force of this verse very well (The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2, pp. 33–34):

There is nothing in this passage [Isa 45:18] that would suggest a chaotic state of the earth ‘which is opposed to and precedes creation.’ Thus, the term tohu here too signifies ‘a desert-like place’ and refers to ‘an uninhabited place’…. It should be further noted that lo’-tohu here [Isa 45:18] is a resultative object, referring to the purpose of God’s creative action. In other words, this verse explains that God did not create the earth so that it may

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stay desert-like, but to be inhabited. So this verse does not contradict Gen 1:2, where God created the earth to be productive and inhabited though it ‘was’ still tohu wabohu, in the initial state.

Our understanding of Genesis 1:2 is reflected in the Jewish Aramaic source Neophyti I with its interpretation of tohu wabohu, “desolate without human beings or beast and void of all cultivation of plants and trees” (cited by Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in vol. 2 of the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 27).

Therefore, Genesis 1:2 is not referring to a state of judgment, but is affirming that, in the first phase of God’s creative activities, the earth was unformed and empty. It was not yet a suitable place for God’s image bearers to live. Though the earth was incomplete, it was exactly what God wanted on the first day of creation. Tsumura correctly summarizes the teaching of Genesis 1:2 with this conclusion (p. 156): “In conclusion, both the biblical context and extra-biblical parallels suggest that the phrase tohu wabohu in Gen 1:2 has nothing to do with ‘chaos’ and simply means ‘emptiness’ and refers to the earth which is an empty place, i.e., ‘an unproductive and uninhabited place.’”

5. “Darkness” as a Reflection of JudgmentAn argument used by some gap theorists is that the term “darkness” (hosek) cannot be used to describe a state created by the God of light. The “darkness” of v. 2 is therefore a result of judgment (see citations by Fields, pp. 131–33).

When God concludes His creation on the sixth day by summarily saying that everything was “very good” (1:31), I would understand that this includes the “darkness” of v. 2. Those who hold to the gap theory, as well as some its modifications, interpret “darkness” as denoting something negative; i.e., a state of confusion and lifelessness—that which is the antithesis of God. This poses more biblical problems than it solves. We will consider three of these problems. First, if God did not create darkness, who initially created it? Furthermore, we should notice that God gave a name to darkness, just like He gave names to everything else He creates in Genesis 1, without even a hint of anything undesirable about it. In addition, if God did not create “darkness” (hosek), how do we harmonize this with Isaiah 45:7 and Psalm 104:20, both of which state that God created “darkness” (hosek)?

Second, to disconnect the physical darkness of 1:2 from God

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“because darkness came to symbolize evil and sin is to confuse the symbol with the thing symbolized. It is like saying yeast is evil because it came to represent spiritual evil. The fact that a physical reality is used to represent something spiritual does not mean that every time this physical reality is mentioned, it must be representing that spiritual entity. Those who claim that darkness in Genesis 1:2 is evil have confused the spiritual symbol as used elsewhere with the physical reality in this passage” (Rooker, “Genesis 1:1–3—Creation or Re-creation? (Part 2).” Bibliotheca Sacra 149 [October-December 1992]: 422).

Third, the grammatical arrangement of v. 2 does not support taking “darkness” as something negative. Verse 2 is made up of three coordinate clauses in the Hebrew text. The breakdown of this verse looks like this:

1And the earth was formless, and void;2and darkness was upon the face of the deep.3And the Spirit of God was moving upon the face of the waters.

Most supporters of the gap theory explain that the third clause is clearly a positive statement, yet they interpret the first two clauses as negative statements. If the third clause is clearly positive and if these are coordinate, parallel clauses, why does this not influence how the first two clauses are interpreted? Keil and Delitzsch have reflected the force of this: “The three statements in our verse are parallel; the substantive and participial construction of the second and third clauses rests upon the htyhw [“was”] of the first. All three describe the condition of the earth immediately after the creation of the universe” (Pentateuch, 1:49). The existence of “darkness” as well as “formless and void” in the preceding clause reflects that the earth was not yet a suitable place for man to live. Therefore, rather than taking the “darkness” of Genesis 1:2 as a negative description of the earth’s condition, it is a positive description of the first stage in God’s making the earth a fit habitation for man. As Young has stated the case (Genesis One, p. 34):

As the first word in this clause Jv,j [“darkness”] is emphasized,

it stands as a parallel to År<a;h; [“the earth”] in the previous clause. There are thus three principal subjects of the verse: the earth, darkness, and the Spirit of God. The second clause in reality gives further support to the first. Man could not have lived upon the earth, for it was dark and covered by water.

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6. Theological Deficiencies with the Gap TheoryMy focus in our discussion of the gap theory has been upon the biblical evidence used to support the gap theory. However, there are some theological deficiencies inherent in the gap theory that we would be remiss if we did not mention. There are three deficiencies that we will consider. The first deficiency relates to an unwarranted geological concession that was an underlying motivation for the formation of the gap theory. This geological concession also creates two other deficiencies related to our understanding of the flood of Noah and the fall of Adam.

From its original inception, the gap theory has been an attempt to harmonize Scripture with geology. Though harmonization of man’s observable world through scientific processes is not necessarily detrimental to the faith, it is detrimental when the “assured” results of science are maximized over and/or in conflict with the absolute truth of Scripture. Such was the case of Thomas Chalmers who was willing to surrender vast amounts of time as an accommodation to the “assured” results of naturalistic geology. His concession is clearly reflected by this: “Should, in particular, the explanation that we now offer be sustained, this would permit an indefinite scope to the conjectures of geology—and without any undue liberty with the first chapter of Genesis” (cited in Fields, p. 41). In permitting “an indefinite scope to the conjectures of geology,” the gap theory sets its underpinnings in an old earth model along with its demands for worldwide catastrophes before the creation of Adam. According to the gap theory, animals and the predecessors of mankind were living and dying for millions of years before the creation and fall of Adam (Whitcomb and Smith, p. 131). While gap theorists have held to biblical inerrancy and have vocally been in opposition to evolution, they, nevertheless, have a fundamental defect that is also shared by uniformitarian geologists, viz., the sedimentary strata and fossil remains are to be explained by an old earth, with millions of years of death and destruction. If modern geology had not developed as a supposed scientific discipline, the raison d’être for the gap theory would have been removed. Unfortunately, while affirming an anti-evolutionary perspective, the foundational position of a ruin and restored old earth affirms the contrary (see Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, Answers Book, p. 58). Thus, the first deficiency reflects that the motivation for the gap theory was generated as a compromise of Scripture with geology.

This compromise suggests a few questions. Should the sedimentary rocks and fossils be correlated with a biblically ambiguous

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worldwide catastrophe read into Genesis 1:2 or an event that is explicitly described as a universal flood in the days of Noah? In addition, are we to believe that death and destruction prevailed in a sinless world millions of years before the fall of Adam and the consequential Edenic Curse in Genesis 3? Furthermore, how do we harmonize God’s pronouncement of perfection over his creation in Genesis 1:31 (“God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good”) with the earth being a virtual graveyard for thousands of fossils reflecting death and destruction? These types of questions are answered in our discussion of the two remaining theological deficiencies.

The second deficiency of the gap theory is that it undermines the Scriptural import of Noah’s Flood. By placing the fossil-laden sedimentary rocks in the so-called flood of Lucifer between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, gap theorists have read into the Scripture greater import to an event about which Scripture is completely silent. In contrast to divine silence on the supposed catastrophe of Genesis 1:2, the universal flood in Noah’s day is repeatedly mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible makes no “reference anywhere to any other world-wide catastrophe than that in Noah’s day” (Kelly, p. 96).

The gap theory’s third deficiency compromises the biblical import of Genesis 3 and how it impacts on the fall of Adam, and the Edenic Curse. In dealing with the fall of Adam, not only do we need to grasp the actual fall but its effect on creation, the Edenic Curse. To grasp the significance of the fall of Adam and Edenic Curse in Genesis 3, we must understand the dominion mandate, represented in the first two chapters of Genesis. Having been made in the image of God, Adam was created by God, in Genesis 1:26, 28, to represent him as vice-regent over creation. An aspect of Adam’s role is spelled out as his ruling over the animal kingdom in v. 26 (“let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth”), and again in v. 28 (“God said to them…‘rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’”). Adam’s kingship over the animals is further reflected by his assigning names to the animals that God brought before him in 2:19 (for a poetic recounting of the dominion mandate, see Ps 8:6–7). Another aspect of Adam’s dominion over creation is seen in 1:28, where Adam and Eve were to “subdue” the earth, and again in Genesis 2:5, 15, where man is to “cultivate” (or, “work”) and to “keep” (or, “take care of”) the ground. Based upon the dominion

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mandate, we can see that two aspects of Adam’s dominion specifically include the animals and the ground.

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 only specifically records God’s announcement of judgment on the serpent, the ground, Adam and Eve. However, we understand from the overall context of Genesis and other related biblical texts that those specifically mentioned in Genesis 3 are representative of other parts of Adam’s kingdom. This is to say that when God judged his vice-regent, this judgment extended beyond Adam to the created realm over which God had given him authority. Not only does Moses set forth that divine judgment had an effect on Adam and the subjects of his dominion, but Paul also strongly suggests this in the New Testament. For example, the effects of the fall are seen on Adam’s family. In Romans 5:12–21, Paul maintains that Adam brought death and condemnation to all those procreated in his family line, and by implication, his wife. Paul precisely states that humanity’s death came by Adam: “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin” (Rom 5:12; see also 1 Tim 2:11–15). In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul again teaches that “by a man came death” (vv. 21), and “in Adam all die” (v. 22).

But death and destruction are not simply confined to Adam’s family—it includes the created realm over which he had dominion. This is also strongly suggested in Romans 8 where Paul maintains, “the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it” (v. 20). The effects of the Edenic Curse brings the creation under such a bondage that Paul describes it as “slavery to corruption” (v. 21), and further that this curse is so pervasive that “the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now” (v. 22). Therefore, the effects of Adam’s sin initiated death and destruction into the created realm. Because of this, we must date “all of the rock strata which contain fossils of once-living creatures as subsequent to Adam’s fall” (Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood, p. 239).

In the final analysis, this third deficiency of the gap theory irreparably undermines the dominion mandate and Edenic Curse. Whitcomb and Smith have explained this deficiency with this (p. 131):

It was not Nature, or Satan, but man who was created to be the king of the earth (Psalm 8, Hebrews 2:5–8); and not until man deliberately rejected the known will of God did death make its

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first appearance on this planet (Romans 5:12) or did animals fall under the “bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21). It is at this point that the Gap Theory has seriously compromised the Biblical doctrine of man’s original dominion and the doctrine of the Edenic Curse.

The purpose of our discussion of the gap theory has been to examine and evaluate this hypothesis and its supporting arguments. None of the supporting arguments for the gap theory can be consistently defended in Scripture. In fact, the supporting arguments are both exegetically and theologically myopic. Furthermore, its ruin and restored old earth premise is the result of an unwarranted geological concession. A problem for this flawed premise is that it requires an old earth with a history of death and destruction; and this history of death took place millions of years before the fall of Adam and the Edenic Curse. This is biblically inconsistent with God’s pronouncement of perfection in Genesis 1:31: “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” In the final analysis, the gap theory, according to Douglas Kelly, “is not a fair and straightforward reading of Scripture, nor does it successfully reconcile the biblical picture of origins with ‘scientific’ naturalism. The ‘gap’ theory should serve as a model of what Christians should not do in their legitimate desire to speak Biblical truth into a world held in the tight grip of humanistic premises” (p. 95).

II. Young earth creationismYoung earth creationism (YEC), also called recent creationism, is the traditional explanation of Jews and Christian alike. We will initially describe this view. Its supporting information and finally an apparent problem will follow this.

A. Description of YECVerse 1 is an independent statement declaring that God created the original mass called earth out of nothing. Since Moses used the waw-conjunctive to introduce v. 2, he was explaining what the earth was like at the time of its creation in 1:1. Consequently, v. 2 is answering the question, what was the earth like at the time of its creation in v. 1? The answer of v. 2 is that it was in an abiotic form, it was “without form and empty.” It was covered by water and the Spirit of God was protectively watching over it. It was not imperfect; it was simply incomplete. It was the first step of a six-step/day project. When God created the heavens and the earth, He chose to complete this process in six literal days (see also Exod 20:8-11 and 31:15–17).

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B. Support for YECThe basic support for this view is found by taking Genesis 1:1–2 at face value.

1. In v. 1 the Hebrew verb “create,” bara’, is used to describe God’s initial creative activity in bringing into existence “the heavens and the earth” without the use of any preexisting material. Though bara’, “create,” does not inherently mean to “create out of nothing,” it is the most appropriate Hebrew verb to describe creatio ex nihilo. Our argument has been that the semantic range for bara’ may include, in an appropriately qualified context, the concept of “creation out of nothing.” This argument was based on four semantic items: God is the subject of bara’ in Genesis 1:1 just as He is also exclusively the subject in all other 37 uses of the Qal stem of bara’, no material used to create the products (the heavens and the earth) is mentioned in the immediate context, the direct objects of the verb bara’ are always specially created objects, and bara’ is qualified in Genesis 1:1 by the prepositional phrase “in the beginning” (see above). All of these semantic items argue forcefully that Genesis 1:1 is a description of creation ex nihilo.

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The doctrine of God’s creation out of nothing sets a foundation for all Christian theology. Genesis 1:1 assumes that God existed at the beginning of the created order. Consequently, Genesis 1:1 reflects that there is the realm of the Creator and there is the realm of the created. As such, there is a two-layered view of reality. In the divine realm, God was uncreated and eternally existed prior to the created order. The God of Genesis 1:1 existed in eternal bliss as the self-existent, self-sufficient, self-contained triune God who, while equal in divine essence, existed as three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the created realm, the Creator created all, and, therefore, all that is created is absolutely dependent upon the Creator for their existence. Thus, God is the uncreated, self-existent, self-contained Triune God, but all that is outside of the divine realm are created and dependent upon God for everything.

Because of Scripture’s doctrine of creation, God has given us the foundation for a theory of reality or metaphysics. Genesis 1:1 “indicates that reality is two-layered in nature. The upper layer is the uncreated, self-contained, independent, living God of the Bible. He is the God who sovereignly determines to create a universe that is dependent upon him. Thus we have the Creator-creature distinction in the area of metaphysics that describes all of reality” (Morton Smith, “The Theological Significance of the Doctrine of Creation,” p. 244).

In addition to the foundation that creation lays for metaphysics, there is of necessity “a two-layered view of epistemology or of knowledge. God, who is the source of all truth has all knowledge in and of himself. He pre-interprets all the truth and all the facts that he places in the created universe, so that as man learns more and more of this universe, he is rethinking God’s thoughts after him. In the area of epistemology, God thinks originally, and creatively, whereas man thinks analogically, thinking God’s thoughts after him. He thus does not think originally, but derivatively and recreatively. From this two-layered view of metaphysics and of epistemology the Christian understands that the area of ethics is also two-layered, with God as Lord, and the creature as the servant, who must obey his Maker” (ibid.).

In the following two paragraphs, Smith reflects further on the ramifications of creation for apologetics:

“This Creator-creature nature of reality, knowledge and ethics, gives the Christian his best tool for apologetics or defending the Christian faith. As one compares the Christian world and life view

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with any non-Christian world and life view, it is particularly the doctrine of creation that shows that Christianity alone makes sense of the world in which we live. All non-Christian systems have at their root the twofold assumption of the just-thereness of the world, and that the autonomous mind of man is able to deal with the world without the aid of God. The Christian must challenge the non-Christian in his basic assumptions.

As the Christian presses the non-Christian to recognize his own presuppositions of a chance world and human autonomy, he can point out that on the basis of these things, the non-Christian is not able to predicate anything. Or, to put it in another way, the non-Christian view of facts is that they are ‘brute facts.’ If that is so, then they are unrelated facts, and thus no relationships can be established between any facts in the universe. There is no cause and effect relationship, no reason why 2 plus 2 must always equal 4 today. There can be no science on this basis. There can be no understanding of any facts of the universe on the basis of a chance universe” (ibid., pp. 244–45).

2. The expression “the heavens and the earth” in v. 1 describes God creating the heavens without any created objects in it, excluding the angelic realm (see Job 38:7), and the earth as a watery, inorganic sphere. Some have argued that “the heavens and the earth” are only used in the Bible to refer to an orderly arranged, “heavens and earth” (so Waltke). This means that the “heavens and the earth” in v. 1 describe a completed heaven with sun, moon, and stars; and the earth is complete with flora, fauna, and a pre-Adamic race. This is to say, the description of the heavens and earth in v. 1 can only present a completed heavens and earth either billions of years prior to the re-creation of the heavens and the earth as taught in Genesis 1:2–31, or immediately after the completion of the events that took place on the sixth day of creation. If either of these two understandings of Genesis 1:1 are correct, Genesis 1:1 must represent either a pristine divine activity of creation containing a completely formed and filled earth with all of this done in a nanosecond (as the gap theory affirms) or a summary statement that could only have been written after the heavens and the earth had been completed on the sixth day (as the precreation chaos theory affirms).

Against this, we must ask ourselves the question: Is it a necessity to have “the heavens and the earth” with the same meaning throughout the Bible, especially when the context is describing the beginning of the created world order? We must emphasize that 1:1 is the first use of “the heavens and the earth,” and “one could naturally ask how else

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the initial stage of the universe might be described. The phrase here could merely refer to the first stage of creation. This idea that Genesis 1:1 refers to the first stage in God’s creative activity might be supported by the context, which clearly reveals that God intended to create the universe in progressive stages” (Rooker, “Part 1,” p. 319). After His creation of the heavens and the earth, God creates a localized light source, v. 3.

3. “Now the earth was formless and void” begins v. 2. As noted in our rebuttal to the gap theory, it is highly unlikely that the Hebrew text shows a movement in time. This simply clarifies what the earth was like when God initially created it. It is virtually impossible for the Hebrew verb correctly translated as “was” to be rendered as “became.” The verb “was” describes the earth’s condition as being “formless and empty.” As noted earlier, “formless and void” refers to the earth being unformed and unfilled. It was a watery mass and had no organic life.

4. When God concludes His creation on the sixth by summarily saying that everything was “very good” (1:31), I would conclude from this that this includes the “darkness” of v. 2. As we previously developed, to not have “darkness” created by God (see Isa 45:7) creates more problems than it solves (see above). While we do not want to rehearse all the details from our earlier three arguments for God’s creation of “darkness,” it will be helpful to review the grammatical arrangement of v. 2, since it does not support taking “darkness” as something that is in a state of judgment. Verse 2 is made up of three coordinate clauses in the Hebrew text. The breakdown of this verse looks like this:

1And the earth was without form, and void;2and darkness was upon the face of the deep.3And the Spirit of God was moving upon the face of the waters.

Most taking some form of the gap theory or precreation chaos theory explain that the third clause is clearly a positive statement of God’s loving and sovereign control, yet they interpret the first two clauses as negative descriptions of the results of God’s judgment on the earth. The elliptical nature of the second and third clauses reflect the tight coordination of these three clauses. If the third clause is clearly positive and if these are coordinate, parallel clauses, then the first and second clauses may also be a positive description of the earth’s condition when God initially created it. The existence of “darkness”

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and a condition described as being “formless and void,” in the preceding clauses, reflect that the earth was not yet a suitable place for man to live. Therefore, rather than taking the “darkness” of Genesis 1:2 as a negative description of the earth’s condition resulting from divine judgment, it is a positive description of the first stage in God’s making the earth a fit habitation for man, as Young observes

As the first word in this clause Jv,j [“darkness”] is emphasized,

it stands as a parallel to År<a;h; [“the earth”] in the previous clause. There are thus three principal subjects of the verse: the earth, darkness and the Spirit of God. The second clause in reality gives further support to the first. Man could not have lived upon the earth, for it was dark and covered by water (Genesis One, p. 34).

5. A recent creation theory of Genesis 1:1–2 is coordinate with the First Law of Thermodynamics. This law of energy conservation maintains that energy can be transferred from one place, or form, to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed” (Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, pp. 186–87). This is to say, according to Asimov, “The total quantity of energy in the universe is constant” (ibid., p. 187). Science can re-shape and re-direct energy, but it cannot create energy. Furthermore, science cannot explain how energy is created; however, it is clear that energy cannot create itself. Accepting the validity of the First Law of Thermodynamics, how do we explain the inception of energy and matter? The only viable explanation is found in Scripture and that is that God who is self-existent and eternal created it with His initial creative acts on the first day.

C. Problem with YECAn apparent problem with YEC is that it does not harmonize well with some currently accepted humanistic and evolutionary interpretations set forth in various scientific disciplines. However, the supposed facts of science can be legitimately explained from a YEC perspective. Our thrust is to harmonize science with Scripture and not Scripture with science.

III. Three Theological Lessons

A. The Creator-creation distinctionSince God created the earth without the use of previously existing materials, this indicates that God is the self-existent, self-sufficient, self-contained Triune God and that the created realm is absolutely dependent

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on God. As such, we have the Creator-creation distinction.

B. Predestination God’s creation also presupposes that He has a predestined plan and has absolute rights of ownership over all creation.

C. PerseveranceFor those who know God not only as Creator but also as their Redeemer Lord through Jesus Christ, there is a tremendous responsibility to persevere in the faith. As such, we must fight our doubts and expressions of unbelief and strive to be instruments of salt and light in a secular, evolutionary society. In faith, we must think our thoughts after God’s thoughts and challenge our world to do the same through submission in faith to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.

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Part 3: Death and Decay in Genesis 3Sin and its consequential results, such as death, seem hard to reconcile with a perfectly created universe. When and how did disease, suffering, and death become a part of God’s good universe? In this lesson, we will look at Genesis 3 in order to see how God’s good universe became marred with death. We will initially look at the temptation leading to the fall in vv. 1–7 followed by God responding to the fall in vv. 8–24. Based upon the biblical text, we will look at the fourfold significance of the fall for Biblical Creationism.

I. Temptation leads to the fall by magnifying disobedience, vv. 1–7.

A. Temptation raises questions about God’s Word, vv. 1–3.

1. Satan subtly questions God’s Word, v. 1.

2. Eve naively responds to Satan’s approach, vv. 2–3.

B. Temptation raises doubt about God’s motives, vv. 4–5.

1. Satan’s denies God’s Word, v. 4.

2. Satan distorts God’s motives, v. 5.

C. Temptation brings alienation to God’s standards, vv. 6–7.

1. Eve ignorantly violates God’s Word, and Adam willfully disobeys and plunges the world into sin, v. 6

1 Timothy 2:12–15: “But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.”

Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

2. Adam and Eve’s fallen state reflects their alienation to God, v. 7.

II. God responds to the fall by announcing judgment, vv. 8–24.

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We will examine the effects of sin on various people and parts of God’s creation (McCune, “Systematic Theology II,” pp. 33–35; see also Morris, The Young Earth, pp. 128–35).

A. Adam and Eve

1. Spiritual death involves a spiritual separation from God.

2. Physical death began with the dying process. Their bodies began to decay and this would culminate in their physical death.

3. Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden. This was done apparently to keep them from eating from the tree of life.

4. Limitations were placed upon the first couple’s ability to rule on earth as God’s vice-regents.

5. There was a change in the relationship between Adam and Eve. It appears that Eve’s depravity included a desire to control her husband, v. 16. This made the domestic relationship more difficult.

B. Satan and the serpentWith the curse in v. 14, the Satanically chosen representative of the animal world, the serpent, was cursed above all the livestock and wild animals. This curse involved a supernaturally produced change in the serpent’s anatomy, resulting in it crawling on its belly. Satan’s future defeat through a representative from woman’s children is announced in v. 15.

C. The animalsIn light of Genesis 1:26–28, 2:19–20, 3:14, Romans 5:12–21, and 8:19–21, the results of the curse were also experienced by the entire animal kingdom. In addition, we should notice from Genesis 1:29–30 man and animals had been originally programmed to be vegetarians (see also Gen 9:4). Since death and destruction become a part of the created order at this point, this is the period where these carnivorous instincts became manifest.

D. The plantsGod’s curse on the ground in Genesis 3:17–18 also has an affect on the plant world in that the cursed earth will also produce thorns and thistles.

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E. The created world as a whole is also subject to the “futility” of the curse, Romans 8:19–22.

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F. The descendants of Adam and Eve were also affected.

1. Sin is passed on to Adam and Eve’s posterity, Romans 5:12, 19. This is a moral pollution and includes the loss of original righteousness. This is our inherited corruption and depravity.

2. Condemnation is experienced by all people in the line of Adam, Romans 5:16, 18. This includes guilt and the judicial consequence of guilt. Adam’s guilt is passed on through imputation. Adam’s guilt also involves a sentence of condemnation.

3. People die because of Adam’s sin, Romans 5:12, 15, 17; 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22. Death includes 3 phases:a. Physical death involves a temporary separation of the immaterial

part of man from his body.

b. Spiritual death involves separation of the person from communion with God.

c. Eternal death is the final confirmation of the person in spiritual death.

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III. The fall has a fourfold significance for Biblical Creationism.In light of our discussion of the biblical material dealing with the fall and its consequences for the world, there is a fourfold significance for biblical creationism.

A. Disease, suffering and death were not part of the created world over which Adam ruled before the fall.Two observations will help clarify this assertion.

1. The Bible makes a distinction between death in the world of plants and death in the world of “living beings” (“living souls”) and “living creatures.” In the Bible, both man and animal are called nephesh chayyah. For example, man is called a nephesh chayyah, a “living being” (“living soul”), in Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being [nephesh chayyah].” An example related to animals is Genesis 1:24: “Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures [nephesh chayyah] after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.” Thus, both man and animal are called nephesh chayyah, though man is qualitatively different the animals called nephesh chayyah in that man is made in the image of God (Gen 1:26–28, 9:6). The expression nephesh chayyah is biblically used to refer to creatures that have a certain level of consciousness. Plants do not have this level of consciousness and, consequently, are never called nephesh chayyah (Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, Answers Book, p. 104). This greater level of consciousness that man and animals possess seems to relate to vertebrates with a system of blood (see Gen 9:4, Lev 17:11). Since plants are not nephesh chayyah, Adam’s eating a carrot did not involve the “death” of a plant (ibid.). Plant life in the Bible does not die. People and animals die. Prior to the fall, fruit was eaten, but people and animals did not experience disease, suffering, and death.

2. Support for animals not experiencing death before the fall and plants being used as food for man and animal is derived from the original diet God gave Adam in Genesis 1:29–30: “Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food’; and it was so.” Thus, the diet for both forms of nephesh chayyah was strictly vegetarian. This divinely given diet did not involve “death” for plants. If God’s original diet

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involved a prescription for “violent death” to “innocent” fruit, it is hard to conceive how he could have referred to his created order in Genesis 1:31 as “very good.” God’s original diet further implies that animals did not die before the fall. But what establishes this implication as a biblical reality is the nature of the future restoration in the millennial kingdom when creation is restored to the pristine glory of the perfect world in which Adam and Eve were created, a world without disease, suffering, and death. According to Romans 8:20–22, creation was subjected to a curse, “futility,” at the fall. And this same creation anticipates a time when it will be liberated from the curse, and this liberation, in the words of Acts 3:21, will involve a “restoration of all things” at Christ returns. If animal death had been taking place billions of years before the fall, what then is being restored? Rather than creation being liberated, this would suggest that it is going back into an extended condition of disease, suffering, and death (Sarfati, Refuting Compromise, pp. 206–8). Are we to think that this restoration is a return to billions of years of disease, suffering, and death that supposedly existed prior to the fall? Perish the thought! Therefore, the disease, suffering, and death that are a part of the “cursed” created order, were not a part of the world that God originally created. And, we rejoice that suffering and death will not be part of the future restoration.

B. Because the created order was cursed (Rom 8:19–22), this means man’s rule as God’s vice-regent would no longer be peaceful, but would be marked by hostility.The peaceful world of Eden was transformed into a hostile world. He would combat a ground cursed at the fall with thorns and thistles. Man’s hostile world would also include ferocious animals. Prior to the fall, animals had been created as vegetarians. However, with the fall, God’s supernaturally imposed judgment would the biological nature of animals. After the fall, their biological equipment included what may be called their “defense-attack structures,” which would be used for attacking or defending themselves. These types of changes in the created order placed man in a world that was marked by disease, suffering, and death (Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, Answers Book, pp. 105–10).

C. All cosmologies that have death and decay before the fall are problematicSince the fall is the time when disease and death started in the world, this rules out any form of evolution, its supposed Christian offshoot known as theistic evolution or its more current form known as progressive creationism, day-age view, and the gap theory. If any of these hypotheses are correct, Adam and Eve, prior to the fall, ruled over a graveyard of fossils and not the Garden of Eden.

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D. As a righteous judge, God had to hold Adam accountable to the standards He had established.Therefore, God had to impose the curse on His creation. However, in the midst of judgment, God announced in microscopic form His provisions to bring blessing to His fallen world. We see this in Genesis 3:15. This is also implied by the fact that God withheld some of the aspects of His judgment by not immediately putting Adam and Eve to death in the physical sense. As God’s special revelation unfolds, we see how He can be a righteous judge and a merciful God through the provisions of Christ’s sacrificial atonement on the Cross (Rom 5:12–19; 3:25–26). Because of this curse, an aspect of Christ’s atonement had to involve a suffering that made provisions for the created order (1 Tim 2:6; Heb 2:9, 1 John 2:1; 2 Pet 2:1) that had been cursed with the fall (Rom 8:20–21; see Ham, The Lie, pp. 72–73).

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Part 4: The Nature of the Noahic FloodIn the course of history, there have periodically been attacks on the universal nature of Noah’s flood. However, the consensus opinion has maintained that this flood was universal. Beginning in the middle of the 18th century, our classification of species of animals began to increase from a few hundred mammals until today when we see over 5000 mammals. With the ever-increasing number of animal species, there has become growing doubt that Noah’s Ark could have contained all of these animals. In spite of this type of obstacle, most evangelical Christians still affirmed that the Scripture taught universal cataclysmic flood. With the publication of Bernard Ramm’s The Christian View of Science and Scripture in 1954, evangelical Christianity was prepared to abandon the ark of biblical truth. In our present day, many evangelical Christians view those who defend a universal flood in Noah’s days as relics from a bygone day. However, our intention in this lesson is to examine the biblical evidence in order to determine what the Bible affirms about the Noahic Flood along with its significance for Biblical Creationism.

I. Biblical reasons for a universal floodWhitcomb and Morris have listed seven reasons why the flood had to be universal (Genesis Flood, pp. 1–16).

A. The depth of the flood, 7:19–20

B. The duration of the flood, cf. 7:11 and 8:13–14

C. The geology of the flood, 7:11

D. The size of the ark

E. The need of an arkThis need is reflected by comparing the following passages: Genesis 6:13, 7:2, 6:19–20, 7:9, 15. “If the flood were local, why did Noah have to build an ark? He could have walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Traveling just 12 miles per day, Noah and his family have traveled over 2,000 miles in six months. God could have simply warned Noah to flee, as He did for Lot in Sodom” (Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, Answers Book, p. 150).

F. The testimony of the apostle Peter2 Peter 3:3–7: “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of 4His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’ 5For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,

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6through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. 7But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

G. The purpose of the flood

II. God’s involvement with the flood

A. The ark’s designGod revealed to Noah 120 years prior to the flood that He was going to flood the universe. For over a century as Noah and his family built the ark, Noah was preaching to the world of the coming judgment (1 Pet 3:20). With the divinely given design for the ark, it’s rectangular shape provided a vessel that was designed to float and not to move through the water. Its spatial dimensions provided ample room for its crew and creatures. In light of Genesis 7:22, the ark was also designed to accommodate all the pairs of land animals. How could all these animals have fit into the Ark? Based upon the size of the ark (see next picture, from Morris, Biblical Basis of Science, p. 292), it could have handled more than 50,000 animals and had room left over.

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B. God’s care for those in the arkIn light of Genesis 8:1, God provided for the ark’s passengers with the necessary provisions for survival. This may have, at times, included a hibernation process for some of the animals. The biblical text clearly indicates that God miraculously intervened in the process of flooding, it appears that certain aspects of the provisions for Noah’s family and the animals involved human participation.

As such, Noah and his family had a very active role in maintaining the animals on the ark. The number of animals with only eight people to take care of them has been an excuse used by many compromisers to undermine the biblical material. We presently can account for some 5,000 species of mammals. Not only did Noah have to contend with

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mammals, but he also had to contend with birds, amphibians, and reptiles, including dinosaurs. When we count the known types of animals fitting into these species, we presently know of less than 20,000 (see Woodmorappe, Noah’s Ark [1996], pp. xi–xiv).

How could eight people have taken care of all these animals? In responding to this, we need to keep in mind that these present figures do not take into account a biblical “kind.” There is a difference between a biblical “kind” and a variation within the “kind.” Based upon biblical evidence (especially a study of the clean and unclean animal lists in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14), Arthur J. Jones demonstrated that there were between 24 and 66 kinds of clean animals as well as between 604 and 734 kinds of unclean animals taken on the ark (“How Many Animals in the Ark?” p. 106). This would give an estimate of between 1,544 and 2,392 animals taken on the ark (ibid.; this total refers to individual animals and not pairs). S. Scherer has drawn similar conclusions from scientific evidence (1993). In a recent definitive work, John Woodmorappe has expressed his endorsement of these estimates for the number of animals taken on the ark (Noah’s Ark, p. 7). In order to refute the challenges of compromising Christians who attack a universal flood, Woodmorappe’s work is a 300 page feasibility study to provide a systematic analysis of providing for the various needs of 16,000 animals housed in Noah’s Ark during the course of a year. He uses a larger number than demanded by the immediate biblical evidence in order to demonstrate that the manner in which God intended to take care of the animals was within the realm of the human capabilities of eight people, even without God’s daily intervening on their behalf (p. xi).

C. God’s uplifting of the ocean floorWith the uplifting of the ocean basins in Genesis 7:11 (“all the springs of the great deep burst forth”), “accompanied by enormous explosions of suboceanic and subterranean magmas and steam, together with a corresponding sinking of continents, continued for six weeks until the Flood attained its maximum, mountain-covering depth (7:20); and this depth was maintained for another 110 days until the waters had destroyed every living thing on the continents. The uniqueness of this geologic discontinuity in earth history is emphasized in Genesis 8:21–22. Furthermore, the terms of the rainbow covenant in Genesis 9:8–17 and its repetition in Isaiah 54:9 confirm the supernatural uniqueness of this global catastrophe” (Whitcomb, The World That Perished, p. 33),

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D. God’s releasing the waters above the expanseGenesis 7:11 states that “the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” This means that all the water that had been above the earth’s expanse fell upon the earth. What Genesis 7:11 means when it says that “all the springs of the great deep burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened” is that all the water below the earth and all the water of the vapor canopy converged together to flood the entire earth.

E. God’s intervention in the formation of the ocean basins and mountain rangesGod’s supernatural intervention was also needed as the floodwaters began to recede. Two texts are helpful in understanding what happened at this point.

1. Genesis 8:2–3 informs us that when the waters began to recede that “the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed and rain had stopped falling from the sky.” What this means is that the vapor canopy was eliminated by God and the ocean floors that had been lifted up at the beginning of the flood were now reversed, they sank down. This would have resulted in new and much deeper ocean basins being formed “to serve as vast reservoirs for the two oceans which were separated from each other by the atmospheric expanse before the Flood (Gen. 1:7). A natural result of this subsidence was that ‘the waters returned from off the earth continually,’ permitting continents to emerge from the oceans again, as they had done on the third day of creation” (Whitcomb, The World That Perished, p. 35).

2. Psalm 104:6–9 is a reference to the Noahic Flood. A key verse on our subject is v. 8. This verse may be translated in a couple of different ways. Looking past these, I will translate this verse according to general guidelines of normal Hebrew grammar. “The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which you established for them.” This pictures the valley sinking as we saw with Genesis 8:2–3. Therefore, God supernaturally depressed certain parts of the earth’s crust to the place He had established for them. We should also notice with Psalm 104:8 that “the mountains rose.” God supernaturally lifted up the great mountain ranges much higher than they had been before the flood in order to offset the lower depths in some of the ocean basins. “Such an interpretation of Psalm 104:8 incidentally solves one of the great problems connected with a universal Flood concept. It is frequently maintained, and rightfully so, that there simply is not enough water in our present oceans to cover all the mountains of the earth, even if ocean basins could somehow be pushed up to present

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sea levels, for there are many mountains more than 20,000 feet high, with an average of only 12,000 feet of water to cover them. But if these mountains (with their marine fossils) rose to their present heights since the Flood, we may assume that none of the ‘high mountains’ that existed before the Flood (Gen. 7:19) were more than 6,000 to 7,000 feet high” (Whitcomb, The World That Perished, p. 39).

III. Results from the flood

A. Climactic changesAs many creationists would argue, there are biblical inferences that tend to support a pre-Flood vapor canopy. If our understanding of the biblical material is correct, we would understand that the vapor canopy was eliminated with the Noahic Flood. Consequently, we would understand that the post-Flood world experienced extremes in cold and heat with the changes in the seasons. Prior to the flood, Noah and his family had no knowledge of a “Michigan winter.”

B. DinosaursDid dinosaurs enter the ark? How could large dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus who was 50 feet high and possibly weighed 80 tons get into the Ark (see the following picture, which was taken from Norma Whitcomb, Those Mysterious Dinosaurs, p. 30)?

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Initially, we need to remember that Noah’s Ark was extremely large. Another thing we need to remember about dinosaurs is that they are reptiles. The older a reptile gets the bigger he gets. The largest crocodiles today are the oldest ones. Dinosaurs are unlike most mammals who reach their full height in young adulthood. Since the primary purpose of taking pairs of dinosaurs into the Ark was for reproduction, God probably brought young adults into the ark which means they had much more growing to do as they would get older. Another fact to remember is that not all dinosaurs are large. The larger ones like Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus (see the following picture taken from Whitcomb, Mysterious Dinosaurs, p. 32) get much of the attention due to their size. However, the majority of dinosaurs such as Compsognathus, who is no larger than a rooster, are much smaller (see Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, The Answer Book, pp. 26–29).

What happened to the dinosaur? With the change in the earth’s climate and topography, it presented a much harsher environment for survival. Since the flood, not all species of animals have survived as written history and fossil records reveal. Due to competition for survival with other animals, man’s activities, and an extremely rigorous post-Flood

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climate, we should not be surprised that most dinosaurs have died off. However, we should not be surprised to see that many cultures have ancient accounts not only about a flood but also about dinosaurs. To find dinosaurs today is no problem for a creationist; however, it is a tremendous problem for the geological column of the evolutionist.

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C. FossilsA fossil is what remains from a plant or animal that has been preserved in the earth’s crust by natural causes. A fossil is generally produced when a plant or animal is quickly buried and covered by a heavy layer of sediment. If the specimen is not covered by sediment or erosion, scavengers will destroy it. Having been buried, minerals will build up in the specimen or the specimen’s cavity. At present, fossils may occasionally be forming. However, nowhere in the world do we find fossils being formed on a massive scale like we find in geologic deposits. For example, it is estimated that there may be as much as 800 billion remains of vertebrates in the Karroo Beds of Africa (Morris and Parker, What Is Creation Science, p. 172).

Fish are unlikely candidates for fossilization, for upon their death they are eaten by other fish and/or disintegrate. However, fossil fish have been located in sedimentary rock. Large numbers of fish have been preserved as fossils. This points to a universal catastrophe. Dinosaurs have also been found in positions suggesting a sudden death. One evolutionist wrote “many entire skeletons of duck-billed dinosaurs have been excavated in…a swimming position with the head thrown back as if in death throes” (cited by Baker, Bone of Contention, p. 11).Another example is found in the Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland. In this cave “the remains of dozens of species of mammals have been found together with reptiles and birds from different types of climates and habitats. Fossil hippopotamus are so plentiful in Sicily that they have been mined as a source of charcoal” (Baker, p. 11). Fossil records do not point to uniformitarianism but to catastrophism such as would have been produced by a universal flood.

D. An ice age following the floodAn aftermath of the Noahic Flood would have been an ice age. Because of the elimination of the vapor canopy, this would have left a tremendous amount of water on the earth. Furthermore, there was a change in the earth’s climactic condition. “Rapid cooling at the poles and warming at the equator would have induced excessive snowfalls and the build-up of vast ice sheets, until after a few centuries conditions stabilized and ice retreated” (Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, The Answers Book, p. 13).

This would explain the millions of mammoths found. “Along the coastline of Northern Siberia and into Alaska are buried the remains of about five million mammoths. On one island in this area, the soil consists of sand, ice, and such a quantity of mammoth bones that they seem to be the chief substance of the island. In some places, the

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mammoths are entombed in ice; in others, they are frozen into sedimentary strata. The refrigeration has been so effective that mammoth carcasses have been thawed to feed dogs” (Baker, Bone of Contention, p. 12). DeYoung has succinctly summarized the creationist perspective concerning an ice age.

“There is strong evidence that ice once stretched far beyond its present boundaries of the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The Ice Age resulted in deformed rock layers, hills of rock debris that were transported by ice, and flat areas where large amounts of melt-water flowed outward. Across upper North America, including the Midwest, a vast continental ice sheet reached a thickness of thousands of feet. Try to visualize this ice mass, standing as high as small airplanes fly. The land underneath was actually depressed by the great weight of overlying ice.

Many creationists believe that this Ice Age occurred directly following the Genesis Flood, since the ice evidence is still present today. Until the vegetation fully recovered following the Flood’s devastation, the earth’s climate was cooler than at present. Plants and trees are very effective in absorbing the earth’s sunlight energy and warming the earth. Other cooling factors may have been increased volcanic dust and cloudiness, or reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide. The post-Flood, colder period of time probably lasted for several centuries. It was a difficult time for many creatures, including the tropical dinosaurs that had been protected on the ark. There may be hints of a cooler earth in the Book of Job. It was written about four thousand years ago, centuries after the Flood. It mentions snow (6:16; 24:19; 37:6; 38:22), ice (37:10), and cold (38:29, 30).

Modern geologists have continually revised their estimates of the Ice Age era. Many of them, both secular and creationist, now date the Ice Age as only a few thousand years ago. Some geologists speak of multiple ice ages because of overlapping layers of glacial evidence. Most creationists favor a single ice age, with the extent of ice advancing and receding several times as the temperature and precipitation fluctuated. This resulted in later ice layers and debris being deposited over previous layers. A colder climate following the Genesis Flood is consistent with the scientific evidence. In contrast, secular science has no clear explanation for an ice age. The usual claims of a cooler sun, change in earth’s orbit, or a large meteorite collision with the earth all have serious scientific difficulties” (Weather and the Bible, pp. 116–17).

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Part 5: God’s Delight in CreationWe are bombarded directly and indirectly with the so-called fact of evolution. Whether it is through the media, public education arena, or even by the extension through laws enacted in our country, such as abortion or the “right to die” argument, evolution is either presupposed or directly taught. Evolution is an assumed fact of our culture. However, in this series, I will attempt to demonstrate that evolution is in opposition to the clear teaching of Scripture. Before we begin looking at the subject of Biblical Creationism, we need to first answer the question: Why does God delight in His creation work of Genesis 1? This morning I want to answer this question from Psalm 104. We will highlight four reasons why God fully delights in His creation.

I. The first reason why God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s insuppressible glory, vv. 1–4, 31–32.

A. God’s glory is correlated with His greatness, v. 1.

B. God’s glory is manifested in His work of creation, vv. 2–4.

C. God’s glory is insuppressible, vv. 31–32.

II. The second reason God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s incomparable power, vv. 3–5, 24–25.

A. God’s power is demonstrated by His creation of the

B. God’s power is incomparable.

III. The third reason God fully delights in His creation is that creation reflects God’s incomprehensible wisdom, vv. 24–25.

A. God’s wisdom is displayed in His creation.

B. God’s wisdom is incomprehensible.

IV. The fourth reason God fully delights in his creation is that creation reflects God’s good pleasure, vv. 31–35.

A. Creation points us beyond itself to the infinite God.

B. Creation delights the infinite God.

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C. Creation with its God-centered focus should move us to fully delight in its Creator.

God and His full delight in creation must be the believer’s full delight. If God fully delights in His creative activities of Genesis 1, then we must continuously think, act, and delight in God’s supernatural creation.

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Part 6: Two Contrasting World ViewsWhat is the significance of creation, the fall, and the flood? We are living in a world that is diametrically opposed to God’s supernatural creation, divinely imposed curse, and a divinely sent universal flood. Yet, we live in a world that is struggling with its own chaotic condition.

The purpose of this study is to contrast two systems of belief: creation and evolution (following picture taken from Ham, The Lie, p. 35). We will accomplish this by identifying what the issues are in the creation and evolution debate and then by challenging us to affirm and/or reaffirm our commitment to God and His supernatural work. We will initially look at evolution as religion, then creationism as a religion, and finally some concluding remarks about the religious systems of creationism and evolutionism (for a good discussion of the issues in this debate, see Donald E. Chittick, The Controversy: The Roots of the Creation-Evolution Conflict).

I. Evolution is a religion.While many people would disagree with the statement that “evolution is a religion,” there are some adherents to some form of macroevolution that would agree with this statement. For example, Dr. Robert Jastrow, a respected physicist, astronomer, and geologist stated the issue like this:

“Perhaps the appearance of life on Earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited. Either life was created on the Earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on the surface of the planet.

The first theory places the question of the origin of life beyond the reach of

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scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science.

The second theory is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief” (Robert Jastrow, “God’s Creation,” Science Digest, special spring issue [1980]: 68).

A. The nature of evolutionOur news media has lead most Americans to think that the creation/evolution debate is one of religion vs. science. This is a grand oversimplification par excellence.

There are three facts that inform us that evolution is a religion.1. It is impossible for science to deal directly with the past. “Anyone who truly

understands what science is about knows that it has to do with what we can deal with in the present—what we can observe and can repeatedly test. The rocks, fossils, and all other forms of physical evidence that scientists are now studying exist in the present, not the past. Scientists cannot go back in time to directly examine the animals and rocks of long ago. They cannot personally observe the past or test it. Scientists are limited to testing and observing things as they exist now—in the present” (Ham & Taylor, Genesis Solution, pp. 10–11).

2. Evolution is a system of belief. “Evolutionary theory is a series of beliefs about the past that evolutionists use to try to explain facts that are observable in the present. Evolution is not ‘science,’ because science can deal directly only with what is observed in the present. No scientist can go back in time to witness or examine the ancient world of dinosaurs and the early days of mankind. Both Creation and Evolution provide ways for explaining the past that are beyond direct scientific examination and verification. Ultimately both Creation and Evolution are beliefs” (ibid., p. 11).

3. Evolution is a religious system of belief. “Despite growing scientific evidence against evolutionary theory, many continue to believe in it with great fervency and faith. Since ‘religion’ can be defined as a concept or system of belief that is held to with ardor and faith, ultimately both Creationism and Evolutionism are religious views of life. Therefore, the conflict is really a battle between two religious beliefs. When governments tell Christians that they cannot provide evidence for Creationism in school ‘because it is religion’—but they can teach ‘science’—what are they really saying? ‘We can’t allow

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Christianity [Creation] to be taught in public schools; we’ve replaced it with another religion—Secular Humanism [Evolution]’” (ibid.).

B. The assumptions of evolutionThe scientists of our day are often assumed to be completely objective people who always search for truth and are completely unbiased. Since the majority of scientists are evolutionists, their supposed objective and unbiased approach to life is put on a pedestal. However, this is a complete misconception. All scientists, whether Creationist or Evolutionist, are in the line of Adam. Therefore, they are fallible, biased human beings. Each proponent of a position reflects a worldview, and they interpret data according to their worldview. George Wald, an evolutionary biologist, recognizes this very point.

“Many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a ‘philosophical necessity.’ It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing” (“The Origin of Life,” Scientific American [August 1954], p. 46).

There are five basic assumptions of the evolutionist:1. Man’s mind as the ultimate standard2. Naturalistic origins3. Chance4. Properties of matter5. Natural process

C. The predictions of evolutionBased upon their assumptions, four predictions can be made within the evolutionary scheme:1. Transitional forms2. Beneficial mutations3. Things improve4. New species

D. The importance of evolution as a worldview

The evolutionary scheme has provided our world with a “scientific” reason for rejecting God and His authority as Creator over our lives. William Provine, professor of history and biology at Cornell, articulates this position: “The implications of modern science, however, are clearly inconsistent with most religious traditions.… No inherent moral or

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ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life” (“Scientists, Face It! Science and Religion are Incompatible,” The Scientist [September 5, 1988]: 10; cited by Henry Morris, The Long War Against God [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989], p. 112).

E. The results of evolutionWith the all-persuasive influence of the evolutionary, humanistic worldview, the values of society are no longer absolute but relative. This has resulted in lawlessness, animalistic view of human life, sexual relativity, and the indulgence of the mind with ungodly images and philosophies.

II. Creationism is a religion.Since God created the universe, superimposed a judgment on his creation at the fall, and subsequently judged the earth with the Noahic flood, biblical creationists turn to God’s word for the correct understanding of these events. As such, creationism is religious. With this foundation, creationists recognize that all God-honoring science is built upon the propositional revelation of the Bible and conduct their scientific research in light of these biblical presuppositions. In examining creationism as a religion, we will examine the same five items as we did with evolution, viz., the nature of creation, its assumptions, predictions, importance, and results.

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A. The nature of creationismIn our society, very few would maintain that creationism is a science. However, creationism is very scientific and not simply a system of religious beliefs. However, creationists would be the first to affirm that biblical creationism is a system of beliefs. Our system of belief is based upon the records given by the One who was there in the beginning and, in fact, did the actual work of creation, our self-existent and eternal God. Hebrews 11:3 states it like this: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” This is in contrast to evolution, which has only finite man’s mind to conjecture about the past.

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B. The assumptions of creationismJust as the evolutionary scientist has assumptions, so does the creation scientist. Let me set forth five assumptions of the creationist:1. God’s Word as the ultimate standard

2 Timothy 3:16–17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The basic assumptions of creationism are derived from the Scripture.

2. Supernatural originA holy God is the Creator of the heavens, the earth, and all things therein.

Acts 17:22–31:Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said:

“Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

24“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28“For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

3. DesignGod’s design is reflected in created realm of inanimate and animate creation. The universe is held together by God’s sustaining power. The human race reflects God’s creative work.

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Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Psalm 8:3–83When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,4what is man that you are mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him?5You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honour.6You made him ruler over the works of your hands;

you put everything under his feet:7all flocks and herds,

and the beasts of the field,8the birds of the air,

and the fish of the sea,all that swim the paths of the seas.

4. Supernatural interventionThree biblical items highlight God’s supernatural intervention.

a. Creation: God created in six, successive, normal daysExodus 20:11—“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

b. FallGod had perfectly created the universe and all creatures therein. However, with the fall of Adam, he as representative of the human race and vice-regent over the earth plunged the created realm into death and decay. The account of the fall is given in Genesis 3 and in Romans 5:12–19 and 8:19–21.

Romans 5:12–1912Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man,

and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—13for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no

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law. 14Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

18Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Romans 8:19–2119The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of

God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

c. Noah’s floodAs sin became rampant on the earth, God judged the earth and its inhabitants with a universal flood. The only recipients of God’s gracious deliverance were Noah along with his immediate family and a pair of all living creatures. This supernatural intervention is described in Genesis 6–9. It is also summarized in 2 Peter 3:3–7:

3First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same

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word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

5. EventIn opposition to an exclusive use of natural causes, God did supernaturally intervene to create the universe and to judge man and his environment at the fall and with a universal flood in Noah’s days.

C. The predictions of creationismBased upon their assumptions, four predictions can be made within the creationist scheme:1. Separate and distinct kinds2. Intelligent design in nature3. Tendency for decay4. Extinction of species

D. The importance of creation as a worldviewThe creationist scheme calls our world to the acceptance of God through Jesus Christ in repentance and faith that requires a full submission to His authority as our Creator God. Acts 20:21—“I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.”

Repentance involves a change of our mind about our sinfulness and the holy God against whom we have sinned. Acts 3:19—“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.”

Faith involves an unreserved trust in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 16:31—“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

Romans 10:9–10 summarizes our response to Jesus Christ: “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

E. The results of creationismIf we follow the creationist worldview—one that is biblically based, our values will be changed from a relative to absolute morality as set forth by the Creator God. This sets forth God-given laws, the sanctity of human life, sexual purity, and the indulgence of the mind on everything that is true and pure—that is biblical Christianity.

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The following is a list of a few Creationist web sites:

Answers in Genesis— http://www.answersingenesis.orgCreation Moments— http://www.creationmoments.comCreation Research Society— http://www.creationresearch.orgInstitute for Creation Research— http://www.icr.orgMidwest Creation Fellowship— http://www.midwestcreationfellowship.orgRevolution against Evolution— http://www.rae.orgWhitcomb Ministries— http://www.whitcombministries.orgWorld Wide Flood— http://www.worldwideflood.com

Various links to creationist journals may be found at http://library.dbts.edu/onlinejournals.html

Biblical Christianity—God’s ThoughtsGod’s Rules—Moral AbsolutesDivine Laws

Sanctity of Human Life

Sexual Purity

Mind Focused on Purity and Biblical Truth

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Selected BibliographyBaker, Sylvia. Bone of Contention: Is Evolution True? Durham, England: Evangelical

Press, 1976.*Chittick, Donald E. The Controversy: Roots of the Creation-Evolution Conflict. N.p.:

Creation Compass, 1984.Custance, Arthur C. Without Form and Void. Brockville, Ontario: Doorway

Publications, 1970.Davis, John J. Paradise to Prison: Studies in Genesis. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975.DeYoung, Donald B. Science and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.________. Weather and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992.Dillow, Joseph C. The Waters Above. Chicago: Moody, 1982.Fields, Weston W. Unformed and Unfilled. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and

Reformed, 1978.Green, W. H. “Primeval Chronology.” In Classical Evangelical Essays. Edited by

Walter C. Kaiser. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972.Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand

Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.Ham, Kenneth A. Genesis and the Decay of the Nations. Florence, KY: Answers in

Genesis, 1991.*________. The Lie: Evolution. Colorado Springs: Master Books, 1991.*Ham, Kenneth A., Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland. The Revised & Expanded

Answers Book. Rev. ed. Colorado Springs: Master Books, 2000.Ham, Kenneth A. and Paul S. Taylor. The Genesis Solution. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.Hasel, Gerhard F. “The ‘Days’ of Creation in Genesis 1.” Origins 21 (1994): 5–38.________. “Recent Translations of Genesis 1:1: A Critical Look.” The Bible Translator

22 (October 1971): 154–67.Jones, Arthur J. “How Many Animals in the Ark?” Creation Research Society Quarterly

10 (September 1973): 106.Jones, Brian. Review of Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael J. Behe. Detroit Baptist

Seminary Journal 5 (Fall 2000): 125–34.Jordan, James B. Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis

One. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1999.Kelly, Douglas F. Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1–2.4 in the Light of Changing

Scientific Paradigms. Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 1997.*MacArthur, John. The Battle for the Beginning: Creation, Evolution, and the Bible.

Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2001.McCabe, Robert V. “A Defense of Literal Days in the Creation Week,” Detroit Baptist

Seminary Journal 5 (Fall 2000): 97–123.McCune, Rolland D. “Systematic Theology I.” Class notes, Detroit Baptist Theological

Seminary, n.d.Morris, Henry M. The Biblical Basis for Modern Science. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984.________. The Long War Against God: The History and Impact of the

Creation/Evolution Conflict. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989.Morris, Henry M. and Gary E. Parker. What Is Creation Science? Rev. ed. El Cajon,

CA: Master Books, 1987.Morris, John D. The Young Earth. Colorado Springs: Master Books, 1994.Mortenson, Terry. The Great Turning Point. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004.

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Piper, John. The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God. Portland: Multnomah, 1991.

Reymond, Robert L. A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

Rooker, Mark F. “Genesis 1:1–3—Creation or Re-creation? (Part 1).” Bibliotheca Sacra 149 (July–September 1992): 316–23.

________. “Genesis 1:1–3—Creation or Re-creation? (Part 2).” Bibliotheca Sacra 149 (October–December 1992): 411–27.

Ross, Hugh. Creation and Time. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994.Ryrie, Charles C. Basic Theology. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1986.*Sarfati, Jonathan. Refuting Compromise. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004.*________. Refuting Evolution 2. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2002. Sauer, Erich. The King of the Earth: The Nobility of Man According to the Bible and

Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962.Smith, Morton H. Systematic Theology, 2 vols. Greenville, SC: Greenville Seminary

Press, 1994.________. “The Theological Significance of the Doctrine of Creation.” In Did God

Create in Six Days? Edited by Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. and David W. Hall. Greenville, SC: Southern Presbyterian Press, 1999.

Thiele, Edwin R. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. New rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.

Tsumura, David Toshio. Creation and Destruction: A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.

*Whitcomb, John C., Jr. The Early Earth. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986.*________. The World That Perished. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973.*Whitcomb, John C., Jr. and Henry M. Morris. The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record

and Its Scientific Implications. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1961.

Whitcomb, John C., Jr., and Charles R. Smith. Review of Without Form and Void, by Arthur Custance. Creation Research Society Quarterly 8 (September 1971): 130–34.

Whitcomb, Norma A. Those Mysterious Dinosaurs. Winona Lake: Whitcomb Ministries, 1991.

Woodmorappe, John. Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study. Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1996.

Young, Edward J. In the Beginning: Genesis 1 to 3 and the Authority of Scripture. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976.

* = recommended introductory reading list

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