A LOOK AT THE THREE MAIN CREATION MODELS

Creation is a Christian Essential•There are several “essentials” of the

Christian faith, which all believers uphold•These essentials include:

▫The deity of Christ▫The death and resurrection of Christ▫The Second Coming of Christ to the earth▫The inerrancy of the Bible▫That God created all things

Creation is a Christian Essential Shared with Judaism •While the other essentials of the Christian

faith are unique to Christianity, Judaism also shares the belief that God is Creator

•Of course, Reform Jews and secular Jews don’t necessarily share this belief, since Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity, and there are many ethnic Jews that are not religious Jews

Creation: Room for Debate

•While belief that God created all things is an essential, there is legitimate room for debate in how and when this occurred

•Christians (and Jews) generally hold to one of three views on Creation

•All of these views believe that Genesis 1 is the inspired Word of God, but they interpret it differently

•These views are as follows:

Young Earth Creation

• This is the belief of ICR (including Henry and John Morris, Duane Gish and Ken Ham)

• Ussher’s chronology (found in many Bibles) holds this view

• Many conservative Protestants accept young earth creation

What Young Earth Creationists Believe

•Young earth creationists believe that God created all things less than 10,000 years ago

•This date is based on the genealogies of the Bible and the understanding that the days of Creation Week are literal, 24-hour days

• It is assumed by most young earth creationists that angels, distant galaxies, matter, space and time all began on the first day of Creation Week (which is not expressly explained in Scripture, but is deduced)

Scientific Problems with Young Earth Creationism• While it is commendable that young earth

creationists take God’s Word literally, there are some legitimate scientific questions

• There are billions of stars, some of them trillions of miles away

• Since light moves at 186,000 miles per second, the light from these stars would take much longer than 10,000 years to reach us

• Carbon dating, which is based on a simple math formula, apparently proves that many rocks are billions of years old

Doctrinal Problems with Young Earth Creation•Young earth creationists respond that

science may be misinterpreted, but it is the Bible that should be taken as truth

•Still, there are some Biblical problems with believing that all things are less than 10,000 years old

•There are Scriptures that say the earth is old!

Old Earth Scriptures•“Hear O mountains…you everlasting

foundations of the earth ” (Micah 6:2)•“The ancient mountains crumbled, and the

age-old hills collapsed ” (Habakkuk 3:6)•Also, the New Testament keeps telling us that

since the death and resurrection of Christ, we live in the last days and even the last hour!

•If all of world history were 6,000 years (as young earth creationists suggest), how could 2,000 years be the last hour?

The Apostle Peter on the Age of the Earth•“For this they willingly are ignorant of,

that by the word of God the heavens

were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water” (II Peter 3:5)

•It sounds like the leader of the apostles believed in an old earth!

Day-Age Theory

•In order to accommodate the idea of an old earth, both for theological and scientific reasons, some Christians and Jews accept a “day-age theory”

•This holds that the days of Genesis 1 were not 24-hour days, but rather long periods of time (maybe millions or billions of years)

Day-Age Support

•Days in the Bible are not always 24-hour days

•The “Day of the Lord” is a seven-year period

•“Day” can be used as an expression, in both Biblical and everyday conversation, to mean a period of time

Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe is a

prominent Christian day-age creationist

Day-Age Support and Problems

•This is perhaps the day-age theorist’s favorite Scripture:

•“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (II Peter 3:8)

•The problem is, the days in Genesis have an evening and a morning

•That sounds like 24 hour days to me!

Gap Creationism – The View I Hold•“Gap Creationism” is the third creation

viewpoint• It is held by many Pentecostal Christians

and by such teachers as J.V. McGee•These creationists believe that the Genesis

1 account does involve literal, 24-hour days in a literal week less than 10,000 years ago

•However, there was a previous creation!•That creation may have existed millions or

billions of years ago

Gap Theory VisualThe only thing I don’t completely agree with this chart is that billions of years separate Genesis 1:1 to 1:2; I think it could have been any length of time

Why Believe the Gap Theory?•Genesis does not tell us that God made the

matter and physical structure of the earth during Creation Week

•Actually, it says the opposite, claiming that the earth already existed, but in an uninhabitable state:

•“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2)

•If the earth did not exist yet in any form, how could it be formless and void?

Other Scriptural Support

•Satan appears in the Garden of Eden to tempt Adam and Eve soon after creation

•That means he and his demons had already rebelled against God

•Yet the Bible does not say that the angels (good or bad varieties) were created during Creation Week

•They actually appear to have already been in existence

The Angels Already Existed!

•“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . Who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted with joy?” God asks Job (Job 38)

•Job was not there at Creation Week, but the angels were!

New and Old Creations

•According to the gap theorist, the following were around a long time ago:

•The physical earth, the heavens (second and third), the angels, Satan, the Trinity

•The following were made during creation week:

•Plants, animals, the solar system, mankind

•However, it is also possible that certain life forms (such as dinosaurs) might have existed in a previous creation (before the gap)

Why Would God Recreate the Earth?

•It appears that God destroyed the original earth and made a new one because of the disobedience of Satan and his followers

•Consider II Peter 2:4:•“For if God spared not the angels that

sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”

•This appears to have been before mankind was around!

God’s Command to Replenish•God tells mankind in Genesis 1:28, according to the

KJV and the 1917 Jewish translation of the Torah:•“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be

fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”

•According to the dictionary, “replenish” means, “fill (something) up again” or “restore (a stock or supply of something) to the former level or condition”

What About the Rest of Young Earth Creationist Beliefs?•While I believe the earth has a history

before Creation Week, I completely accept the Young-Earth model after Genesis 1

•For example, I believe death entered the human race through Adam’s sin, God sent the flood upon all of mankind because of their wickedness several generations after Adam, different languages arose at Babel, etc.

Conclusion

•Christians disagree about Creation, but all Christians believe that God is the Creator

•I personally believe in Gap Creationism