This is my reply to a very nice woman in my class who believed in the Gap Theory, partly because her parents never tried to answer her questions about God when she was little (For those unfamiliar with the Gap Theory, it is a form of Creationism that tries to fit with Old Earth and claims there was a world before this one that was destroyed, and much later, God made the one we have now):

"I really sympathize with you for not getting your questions answered when you were a child. Sure there will probably be some things we won't understand until we get to heaven- like why certain things happened in our lives- and we probably won't understand everything about God even then since, to put it in Evelyn Underhill's words, "If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshiped." However, He does not call us to blind faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is the conviction of things not seen; the assurance of things hoped for." It is very difficult to be convicted of something without evidence and even harder to be assured without reason. And God gives us that reason in His Word, His creation, and Himself.

To me, it seems like the Gap Theory goes against God's Word, creation, and even His own Self. To begin with His word, Genesis clearly says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1; emphasis mine). Since God made such a point of starting with "In the beginning," I do not think it makes sense to believe that there was a gap between that beginning and the earth's being formless and empty in the next verse. Also, supposing there was a gap between those two verses, the purpose of the Gap Theory (explaining the supposed old age of certain rocks) would still come to naught since the second verse clearly says, "The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness" (Genesis 1:2). If the earth truly was empty and formless it would not have any rocks or geological forms or anything but a naked earth cloaked only in darkness. Thus the Gap Theory does not agree with either the Bible or itself.

Neither does the Gap Theory agree with creation. The Gap Theory is founded on the assumption that there are rocks millions of years old, and those assumptions rest on radioactive dating. However, such dates are founded on the premise that rocks formed with the same amount of carbon, uranium, etc. that they do today despite our having no proof that rocks might have formed differently during the Ice Age or Noah's flood. Besides potential faulty premises, there is also the fact that radioactive dating is very hard to compute and there are several things that can throw off the math. It is also important to note that most scientists date rocks while already biased towards an old earth and will read their results in light of that interpretation just as someone who sees Hamlet as a villain will see Shakespeare's play in a completely different way compared to those who see him as a hero. There are also some cases- like with new rock samples taken from the Mount St. Helen's eruption around ten years after the event that radiosoptic dating claimed to be 340,000 to 2,800,000 years old- in which rocks appear older than they are.

Finally, the Gap Theory goes against God Himself. It is one thing for God to give us a choice between good and evil, and then allow us to suffer the consequences (a sinful nature and fallen creation) for deliberately disobeying Him and ignoring His warning. But it is quite another thing for Him to allow a war between Himself and Satan to destroy an innocent world. It goes against His perfect love, justice, and even His omnipotence since He should have been able to stop such an atrocity. Obviously, the Gap Theory goes against the very nature of God.

In conclusion, the Gap Theory was an attempt to create a compromise between the Bible based on God's truth, and long-earth dates based on flawed dating methods. Adherents to the Gap Theory are wise in that they realized that such large dates and the Bible do not naturally correlate. However, they were less wise in letting their convictions in the Bible's truth falter because of fleeting theories and adding to the Bible, which Revelation 22:18 explicitly forbids. God will not smote us for having doubts or questions about Him. But faith requires a good soldier (1 Timothy 2:4), and being a solder implies fighting- but we must always hold to God and to His Truth, no matter what just like a loyal soldier won't switch sides when the other side seems to be winning, which, with many recent scientific discoveries, turns out to be God after all."

Dr. John D. Morris, Ph.D. "Doesn't Carbon Dating Prove the Earth Is Old?" The Institute of Creation Research. Web. 1998.

Brian Thomas, M.S. "Remembering Mount St. Helens 35 Years Later." The Institute of Creation Research. Web. 26 May, 2015.

A couple students, including the Gap Theorist, had questions about why an angel had to guard the garden after Adam and Eve were expelled, why God had to mark Cain to keep others from killing him, and other things they thought implied other people being on earth besides Adam and Eve in their family. Here are my explanations:

"The Bible is very clear that Adam was the first man and that Eve was the first woman; they were the ones God created in His own image, male and female. If there were others outside the garden, then why not let one of the women from out there come in for Adam instead of creating a whole new one out of Adam's rib? And why would Adam and Eve be in that garden and the others banned? And if Adam weren't the first man, then his original sin would not have effected everyone. Maybe, supposing there were others, they had been in the garden before, disobeyed, and then got kicked out. If so, why did God finally stop creating people for that garden only after Adam's disobedience? And why is Jesus called the second Adam and not whoever it was who supposedly sinned first?

As for how Adam and Eve made a family, they had each other and that was all they needed. We already know that they had sons, and they most likely had daughters who became the wives of their sons. This is awkward to talk about, I admit, but laws against inter-sibling marriage did not exist back then, and would have been unreasonable anyway since there was no one else to marry. Also, since Adam and Eve were so fresh from being perfect, their genes and their children's genes (and the genes of most people in those early times) were also borderline perfect and the mutations offspring from such relationships that modern people would suffer did not yet exist back then; the effects of sin were not yet efficient in God's once perfect creation. Note the long lives listed in the Genesis genealogies (Adam lived until he was nine hundred and thirty and he wasn't even the oldest recorded living man!) and the fact that the world was still vastly unchanged from when it was created since Noah's flood had not yet occurred.

The angel was posted outside the garden to prevent Adam and Eve and any and all of their descendants (until the flood when it was probably either destroyed or taken to heaven) from going back to the garden and eating from the Trees of Life and getting immortality in this life. Such protection might seem like too much to keep one family (albeit a very big family) from eating some fruit, but can you imagine being doomed to an eternity of sin in a fallen world? This failing body and constant temptations forever? Definitely worth a guard.

Also, Cain no doubt had many, many siblings (God did say to be fruitful and multiply) who would probably feel vengeful towards him for killing their mutual brother Abel. Not to mention those siblings would likely have many, many kids who might share their parents distaste with Cain (and don't get me started on the grandchildren). It is also important to note that as this occurred before the flood, all the continents were still connected so Cain could, so to speak, run but not hide. It is not necessary to imagine other people besides 'the Adams' to make sense of the Bible, especially since imagining such would be going against the Bible."

-Chapter Breaks by CannibalisticNecro

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