The Strand Study Bible

GENESIS

36

GENESIS

seems to be reflected in the book of God’s general revelation. 2 Dr. Harry Rimmer in That LAWSUIT Against the BIBLE agrees. He notes:

It must be recognized once and for all that there is no “science” of origin. Men of science, called scientists, may hold to individual theories concerning the beginning of things, but science itself does not and cannot deal with origin. A specific science is “a correlated body of absolute knowledge” concerning that particular subject, which knowledge has been derived by trained observers and demonstrated by experiment. How then, can there be a science of origin ? 3 The only statement that Moses makes as to the length of the initial creation of the heavens and the earth is his statement: “ In the beginning …” Arthur W. Pink in Gleanings in Genesis notes: The manner in which the Holy Scriptures open is worthy of their Divine Author. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and that is all that is here recorded concerning the original creation. Nothing is said which enables us to fix the date of their creation; nothing is revealed concerning their appearance or inhabitants; nothing is told us about the modus operandi of their Divine Architect. We do not know whether the primitive heaven and earth were created a few thousands, or many millions of years ago. We are not informed as to whether they were called into existence in a moment of time, or whether the process of their formation covered an interval of long ages. The bare fact is stated: “In the beginning God created,” and nothing is added to gratify the curious. 4 Good men’s opinions will vary on most things and the subject of creation is no exception. Because no one was there (except God) when everything was created, five schools of thought concerning how things began have developed: 1. God created everything 6,000 years ago (called the “young-earth view” 5 ) The Net Bible notes: Some translate 1:2a “and the earth became,” arguing that v.1 describes the original creation of the earth, while v. 2 refers to a judgment that reduced it to a chaotic condition. Verses 3ff. then describe the re-creation of the earth. However, the disjunctive clause at the beginning of v. 2 cannot be translated as if it were relating the next event in a sequence. If v. 2 were sequential to v. 1, the author would have used the vav consecutive followed by a prefixed verbal form and the subject. 6 Ken Ham agrees. He notes in The Revised & Expanded Answers Book : The most straightforward reading of the verse sees verse 1 as a subject-and-verb clause, with verse 2 containing three “circumstantial clauses” – that is, three statements further describing the circumstances introduced by the principal clause in verse. This conclusion is reinforced by the grammarian Gesenius. He says that the conjunction waw (‘andh) at the beginning of verse 2 is a “waw copulative,” which compares with the old English expression “to wit.” 7 As you can clearly note, trying to explain the “young-earth view” can be rather complicated. 2. G od created everything 6,000 years ago with the “appearance of age” (called the “young-earth creationists view”) Dr. Jobe Martin in The Evolution of a Creationist notes: He ( God – my emphasis ) can create whatever He wants to create and make it appear to “have some years” on it… As a six-day creationist, I believe God created the universe and everything in it fully mature (some creationists describe this as being created with the appearance of age). I cannot prove this with scientific experiments, so this belief is called an assumption. I suppose it to be true. 8 Philip Gosse (1810-1888), a British preacher and self-trained biologist, proposed this theory in 1857. 3. God created everything “whenever” (called the “Framework view” 9 ) According to this theory, Genesis 1-2 is to be understood figuratively, not literally ( Isa 54:9 ). 4. Man evolved via evolution (called “theistic evolution”) 5. God created everything millions of years ago, but created man only 6,000 years ago (called the “old-earth view”) Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, proposed this theory in 1814. Chalmers, however, didn’t propose this theory in order to fight the evolutionists, for Darwin hadn’t even written his Origin of Species until 1859. David D. Riegle in Creation or Evolution? notes:

It is possible that the first verse of Genesis refers to a creation which took place long before the events of the six days. Some authors offer Scriptures from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in support of this idea. The prophet Ezekiel addresses God’s message to one whom he calls “the king of Tyre.” Some believe this refers to Lucifer, since he was given control over the earth after the first creation... After Lucifer’s rebellion, he was thrown down from the place he occupied. The earth, which was the place of his rebellion, was made a vast waste land. Genesis 1:2 gives a touching picture of this setting. It reads: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

If this is indeed the real meaning of the first and second verses of Genesis 1, there is no way in which to estimate how long Lucifer ruled over the earth before his rebellion. Neither is there any way to guess how long this period of chaos lasted before the beginning of the Creative Week. If we are looking for evidence that the earth is much older than some Bible scholars readily admit, perhaps this is the explanation. 10 NOTE – No matter what one’s view of creation might be, it should never be a source of contention amongst other believers. As Christians, we ought to be willing to agree to disagree on “non-Heaven and Hell issues” such as creation.