"Gap Theory", "Young UniverseTheory" and "Day-Age Theory"

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=125 BGCOLOR="#996699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="03f467d1erlcll.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>VoiceInWilderness.info</B></FONT><B>     </B><B>|     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="VoiceInWilderness.info"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id39.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Who is a Jew">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Genesis 2:1112 Precious Materials">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="pearl gates">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Isaiah 7:14">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Zechariah 1214 Burden for Israel">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="daniel_s_70_weeks.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Daniels 70 Weeks The Key to OT Prophecy">Daniel's 70 Weeks</A>   |   <B>GapTheory</B>   |   <A HREF="behemoth.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Behemoth">Behemoth</A>   |   <A HREF="id38.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Baptized for the Dead">--Type File Name Here--</A>   |   <A HREF="global_warming.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="global warming">global warming</A>   |   <A HREF="olb.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Online Bible">OLB</A>   |   <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Other">--Type File Name Here--</A>  |  </div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=349 style="border-right: 1px solid #CCCCCC;" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <U>"Gap Theory", "Young UniverseTheory" and "Day-Age Theory"</U><U> </U></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000BF" FACE="Arial" >Gen 6:</FONT>19 <A NAME="gen6_19"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A> And you shall bring into the ark two of every kind, of every living thing of all flesh, to keep alive with you; they shall be male and female;</div> <div> 20 from the birds according to its kind, and from the cattle according to its kind, from every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind. Two from each shall come in to you to keep alive.</div> <bR> <div> Job 38:39 <A NAME="job38_39"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A> Dost thou hunt the prey for the lioness, and dost thou satisfy the appetite of the young lions,</div> <div> 40 When they crouch in their dens, and abide in the thicket to lie in wait?</div> <div> 41 Who provides for the raven his food, when his young ones cry unto *God, and they wander for lack of meat?</div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >Gen 1:</FONT>1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.</div> <div> 2 And the earth became waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.</div> <div> 3 And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.</div> <div> 4 And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided between the light and the darkness.</div> <div> 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day.</div> <div> 6 And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it be a division between waters and waters.</div> <div> 7 And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters that are under the expanse and the waters that are above the expanse; and it was so.</div> <div> 8 And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening, and there was morning-a second day.</div> <div> 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so.</div> <div> 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.</div> <div> 11 And God said, Let the earth cause grass to spring up, herb producing seed, fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which is in them, on the earth. And it was so.</div> <div> 12 And the earth brought forth grass, herb producing seed after its kind, and trees yielding fruit, the seed of which is in them, after their kind. And God saw that it was good.</div> <div> 13 And there was evening, and there was morning-a third day.</div> <div> 14 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to divide between the day and the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years;</div> <div> 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth. And it was so.</div> <div> 16 And God made the two great lights, the great light to rule the day, and the small light to rule the night, -and the stars.</div> <div> 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth,</div> <div> 18 and to rule during the day and during the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good.</div> <div> 19 And there was evening, and there was morning-a fourth day.</div> <div> 20 And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let fowl fly above the earth in the expanse of the heavens.</div> <div> 21 And God created the great sea monsters, and every living soul that moves with which the waters swarm, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw that it was good.</div> <div> 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply on the earth.</div> <div> 23 And there was evening, and there was morning-a fifth day.</div> <div> 24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living souls after their kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, after their kind. And it was so.</div> <div> 25 And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.</div> <div> 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.</div> <div> 27 And God created Man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.</div> <div> 28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over every animal that moves on the earth.</div> <div> 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb producing seed that is on the whole earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree producing seed: it shall be food for you;</div> <div> 30 and to every animal of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which is a living soul, every green herb for food. And it was so.</div> <div> 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.</div> <div> 1 And the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished.</div> <div> 2 And God had finished on the seventh day his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.</div> <div> 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because that on it he rested from all his work which God had created in making it.</div> <div> 4 These are the histories of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens,</div> <bR> <div> Job 40:15 <A NAME="job40_15"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A> Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eats grass as an ox.</div> <div> 16 Behold now, his strength <I>is</I> in his loins, and his force <I>is</I> in the <B>navel </B>of his belly.</div> <div> 17 He moves his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his fears are wrapped together.</div> <bR> <div> Song of Songs 7:2 <A NAME="ss7_2"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A> Your navel <I>is like</I> a round goblet; it never lacks mixed wine. Your belly <I>is like</I> a heap of wheat set about with lilies.</div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=355 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> From Bible Chronology, we know that mankind is about 6,000 years old. Man did not evolve from any other living things (Gen 1:;2:), but God formed his body from the earth and created him after His own image, vastly different from all the animals. </div> <bR> <div> The 6,000 years of the Bible take us back to day 1 of Genesis chapter one. When did that day one start? If that day one started at the beginning of time, then the universe is just 6,000 years old. But if there was time before that day one, and if God did creating work before that day, then the Bible does not tell us how old the universe or the earth is.</div> <div> I will cover the following subjects:</div> <div> 1. When did day one start and end?</div> <div> 2. Principles for eating the Lord's word.</div> <div> 3. Verse by Verse thru Gen. 1.</div> <div> V1 - title or actual event?</div> <div> V2 - Relationship between v1 and v2.</div> <div> Become or was?</div> <div> V3 - Did light exist before v3?</div> <div> Was this the first day and first night?</div> <div> V11 - Did God make the plants in a mature state?</div> <div> Did God create the plants in v11?</div> <div> Compare to Gen 2:9</div> <div> 4.  Verses that are used against the gap theory</div> <div> a. Rom 5:12</div> <div> b. Exo 20:11</div> <div> c. Ezekiel 28</div> <div> 5. Verses that support the gap theory</div> <div> a. Peter</div> <div> b. 1 Cor 4:</div> <div> c. Job</div> <div> d. Heb worlds</div> <div> 6. Gap Theory mistakes</div> <div> a. pre-adamic men</div> <div> b. God re-created the same creatures again</div> <div> c. demons were pre-adamic earthly creatures</div> <div> 6. Some scientific evidence</div> <div> a. Stars 13 billion light years away burning out</div> <div> b. What happened to the dinosaurs?</div> <div> <B>I.</B><B> <A NAME="dayone"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B> When did Day One of Gen 1 begin and end?</B></div> <bR> <div> I separated this part out from the rest of Gen 1, because it is the most simple and if you agree with this point, then you should not be able to easily dismiss the gap theory. I expect that many readers will not read my whole paper, so I put this first so that it would be the most likely to be read.</div> <bR> <div> Gen 1:3-5 And God said: Let there be light! And there was light.</div> <div> 4 And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.</div> <div> 5 And God called the light day and the darkness He called night. Then came evening, then came morning - the first day. (Leupold)</div> <bR> <div> Gen 1:3-5  Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.</div> <div> 4  God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.</div> <div> 5  God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. (NAS)</div> <bR> <div> Gen 1:5 tells us how day one ended: “and there was evening, and there was morning, one day.”  The Hebrew word for “and there was” in both places is <I>vayehi</I>, which is a vav-consecutive, signifying that the verb action sequentially follows in time the action before it. This is why Leupold translates it as “then came”. </div> <bR> <div> The Hebrew words for “evening” and “morning” are common in the Old Testament (used 131 and 205 times respectively). “Evening” means the time when the light of day is replaced by the darkness of night. “Morning” means just the reverse. In English “morning” may also refer to a time during the night after midnight, but this additional meaning is not in the Hebrew.</div> <bR> <div> The sequence was: </div> <div> 1. God said “Let there be light”; </div> <div> 2. There was light; </div> <div> 3. God saw that the light was good; </div> <div> 4. God separated light from darkness; </div> <div> 5. There was evening; </div> <div> 6. There was morning: one day.  </div> <bR> <div> Day one ended at the morning of the second day. Therefore the length of a day was from morning to morning. Thus day one started with its morning, which would be in Gen 1:3 when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” </div> <bR> <div> This is not an interpretation invented by gappers. This is a straightforward reading of the text. Here is what <I>Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament</I> (TWOT), the basic, conservative Christian, non-controversial Lexicon of the Old Testament says concerning “'ereb”, TWOT#1689a, the Hebrew word for evening:</div> <div> <I>`ereb</I> is found 131 times in the OT. The phrase `there was an evening and there was a morning' occurs six times in the creation narrative, <I>{</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Arial" ><I>#Ge 1:5,8,13,19,23,31</I></FONT><I>}</I> delimiting the six days of divine creative activity. This phrase would indicate that in ancient Israel a day began with sunrise. Some have felt this at variance with the Jewish practice of regarding sunset as the beginning of the next day. <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Cassuto" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Cas"><U>Cassuto,</U></A></FONT> after dealing with the biblical data and the Jewish custom, concludes that there was `only one system of computing time: the day is considered to begin in the morning; but in regard to the festivals and appointed times, the Torah ordains that they shall be observed also on the night of the <I><B>preceding day</B></I>' (U. Cassuto, <I>Genesis</I>, I, p. 29 [his emphasis]). </div> <bR> <div> Leupold, who supports a Young Universe interpretation, says concerning the last statement of v5: </div> <div> To try to make this mean that day began with evening, as days did according to the later Jewish reckoning (Lev. 23:32), fails utterly, because verse 5 reports the conclusion of this day's work not its beginning.</div> <bR> <div> Conclusion: The 6,000 year time record of the Bible goes back this day one of Genesis 1. Day One of Genesis 1 starts with verse 1:3 when God said, "Let there be light", and there was light. God created the heavens and the earth before this day one. Therefore the Bible does not tell us how long ago God created the universe.</div> <bR> <div> <B>II.</B><B> <A NAME="principles"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B> Principles for Eating the Lord's Word</B></div> <bR> <div> In the Old Covenant, God gave Israel detailed dietary laws (Lev 11). Under the New Covenant, we Christians do not need to keep these Old Testament rituals literally (Acts, Col, Rom, Tim), but we need to apply them spiritually (Matt 5).  The Word of God is our real food, and these principles can be applied to the way we take the Word of God into us.</div> <bR> <div> <B>1. Chew the Cud and Have Hooves that are Totally Split Through (Lev 11</B></div> <div> We should chew the Word as a cow chews the cud, not as a pig swallows its food. We should memorize the Word (), muse on it day and night (), enjoy it over and over (), sing it, consider it, question our understanding of it. If this was true, what would be the effects? Why did God say that? Is it worth saying? If I was God, how would I have said it? Do I disagree with any part of it? If I was God and I didn't want it to be misunderstood in a certain way, how would I have said it? etc. We should not question whether the Word is true or not.  Every word of it is true. That is settled. But, standing on that fact, there are many questions that we can ask.</div> <bR> <div> To have the hooves totally split through is to have discernment, and to carry the discernment through to its conclusion. The camel is unclean because its hooves, though split, are not split all the way through. Muslims, however, who copied the Leviticus dietary laws, consider the camel to be clean because its hooves are split part way.  Having some discernment, but not carrying it to completion, seems to me to be worse than having none at all.  In reading the Bible, we need to pay attention to small differences: What is the distinction between “create”, “make”, “form” and “build” in Gen 1-2. “Morning” is not the same as “day”. “Evening” is not the same as “night”. In Gen 1-2, there are at least 3 meanings of the Hebrew word for “day”, at least 2 meanings for “earth” and at least 2 for “heavens”. </div> <bR> <div> <B>2.  Fish must have fins and scales (Lev 11:</B></div> <div> The sea symbolizes the heathen world (Dan ). We must have fins to swim against the philosophy of the world (Rom 12). We need scales to not accept worldly knowledge that contradicts the Word of God. YEC's are strong in this aspect.  YEC's consider that gappers are just as weak on this and they have some justification for it. I think many gappers accept too much of geologic dating.  </div> <bR> <div> <B>3. No birds of prey or scavengers (Lev 11:</B></div> <div> We should not use God's word to justify ourselves or judge others (Matt). The one we should judge from the word is ourselves (James.  Believers will have different views on many matters, and that is good unless the matter is important to the faith. It is important to the faith to know that man has not evolved from lower animals. YEC's and gappers agree on this and on most else related to creation that I consider important. </div> <bR> <div> <B>4. Insects must have leaping legs (Lev 11:</B></div> <div> We should not become trapped by what we have been taught or learned for ourselves in the past. We need to be able to leap above that at times. We always should be receiving something new from the Lord in the Word (Matt 13).</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>III. Verse by Verse in Genesis 1-2</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Genesis chapter 1</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>v1</B><B> <A NAME="n1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B> - </div> <div> Is verse 1 a title for the rest of the chapter, with the rest of the chapter giving the details of God's creating the heavens and the earth? No, because verse 2 begins with "and".  "And" means something in addition to what preceded, not details of the preceding. Also, in next verse (v2) the earth is already existing. How did it get there? God created it in verse 1. </div> <bR> <div> <B>v2</B><B> <A NAME="n2"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B> </B>- </div> <div> Should Hebrew verb <I>hayah </I>be translated "was" or "became".  In </div> <bR> <div> V3 - Did light exist before v3?</div> <div> Was this the first day and first night?</div> <div> V11 - Did God make the plants in a mature state?</div> <div> Did God create the plants in v11?</div> <div> Compare to Gen 2:9</div> <bR> <div> <B>I. Are there valid scientific objections to the universe being 6,000 years old?</B></div> <bR> <div> Young Universe Creationists (YUC's) have done a good job of showing how scientific dating is based on false assumptions. The theory of evolution is based not only on false assumptions, but on supporting facts that just are not there. But are there any scientific facts, which YUC's agree are facts, which demand that the universe is much older than 6,000 years?</div> <bR> <div> <B>Observable birth and death of stars 13B light years away</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>If the whole universe is only 6,000 years old, how is it that through telescopes, we can see events happening to stars which are 13 billion light years away? We see stars which are 13 billion light years away being formed and others turning into super novas and burning out. </B></div> <bR> <div> A common, but not well thought out, YUC explanation is that when God created the stars, He created them with their rays extending to the ends of the universe. I do not have a problem that God could do that, but it doesn't match what we see. If that were the case, then for any star > 6,000 light years away, we would still be seeing that initial ray of light which God supposedly created along with the star. To our eyes, those stars should never change. We should never see the birth or demise of a star > 6,000 light years away, but we do.  When we see a star 13 billion light years away tuning into a super nova, we are seeing an event that took place 13 billion years ago.</div> <bR> <div> YUC's have some very strange ways of explaining this. One answer is that the speed of light has slowed down and used to be much faster that it is now. For us to see stars 13 billion light years away, that would mean that the speed of light had to slow down by a factor of 2 Million over the past 6,000 years.  The speed of light is the most basic constant of the creation, like the electrical charge on an electron or proton. Change these significantly, and the universe falls apart. There is no evidence for such a change in the speed of light. According to the theory of relativity, (which unlike the theory of evolution has observable facts to back it up), if the speed of light had been much faster, then time would also have had to have been much faster by the same ratio, negating any effect on time.</div> <bR> <div> B. <B>What happened to the Dinosaurs?</B></div> <bR> <div> YUC's agree that dinosaurs once dominated the earth. If God created the dinosaurs on day 6 of Gen. 1, then He must have saved them with Noah on the ark. Why are there none around today? or even 2,000 years ago? Since 2 of every kind of creature was saved on Noah's ark (Gen 6:19-20), then all kinds of dinosaurs must have been saved on Noah's ark. Why are they all extinct? Not one of their kinds remains. Why did God go to the trouble of creating them, and saving them on Noah's ark if they were going to all be extinct a short time after that?</div> <bR> <div> YUC's have different answers. One plainly wrong answer is that  today's lizards are actually small dinosaurs, adapted to today's environment. This is factually wrong. All living reptiles are fundamentally different than dinosaurs. All living reptiles are creeping things. Their legs, if they have them, come out of the sides of their bodies, not from underneath. Dinosaurs were not creeping things. Their legs came out from the undersides of their bodies, like today's land mammals, except they were reptiles.</div> <bR> <div> Other YUC's say that the dinosaurs could not adapt to the new earth environment after the flood, and they all died because they were too big. But many dinosaurs were small. Certainly most were smaller than an elephant. If they could not adapt to the environment after the flood, why did God go to the trouble of saving them on the ark? Why did He create them in the 1st place? All of the creatures that God created had tremendous ability to adapt to changing environments due to the richness of the gene pool that God created in them. What was the matter with God's creating ability that He failed to do that with the dinosaurs?</div> <bR> <div> Answers in Genesis (YUC site)  gives the following explanation: "After the flood, around 4,300 years ago, the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and man's activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out. Why the big mystery about dinosaurs?"</div> <bR> <div> Why the big mystery?  What other entire category (superorder) of creatures has become extinct? God gave His creatures the ability to adapt to climatic change, lack of food, etc. God cares for all His creatures (Job 38:39-41). What other species became extinct do to acts of God and not of man? Most of the species which have become extinct in modern times are not  species according to Darwin's definition. Darwin's definition of a species corresponds to the Bible's kind: animals are the same species if they can produce fertile offspring. Today's scientists do not use that definition. They consider animals to be different species if their DNA is sufficiently different. </div> <bR> <div> If you look at </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>III. When did Day One of Gen 1 begin?</B></div> <div> The most basic difference between gappers and YUC's is how we consider Gen 1:1-2 in relation to the rest of the chapter. YUC's consider that Gen 1:1-2 is part of day one. Gappers consider that Gen 1:1-2 happened before the 6 days. Which is right, or is the Bible ambiguous here?</div> <bR> <div> Gen 1:5 tells us clearly how the day ended: “and there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” (NAS).   The Hebrew word for “and there was” in both places is <I>vayehi</I>, which is a vav-consecutive, which signifies that the verb action sequentially follows in time the action before it.</div> <div> The Hebrew words for “evening” and “morning” are used 131 and 205 times respectively in the Old Testament, and mean just what their English equivalent means. They are distinct words from “night” and “day”.  </div> <div> So the sequence was this: God commanded the light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor 4). Then there was evening, and then there was morning: one day.  So day one ended at the morning of the second day. Therefore the length of a day was from morning to morning. Thus day one started with its morning, which would be in Gen 1:3 when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” </div> <bR> <div> This is not an interpretation invented by gappers. This is a straightforward reading of the text. Here is what <I>Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament</I> (TWOT), the basic, conservative Christian, non-controversial Lexicon of the Old Testament says concerning “'ereb”, TWOT#1689a, the Hebrew word for evening:</div> <div> <I>`ereb</I> is found 131 times in the OT. The phrase `there was an evening and there was a morning' occurs six times in the creation narrative, <I>{</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Arial" ><I>#Ge 1:5,8,13,19,23,31</I></FONT><I>}</I> delimiting the six days of divine creative activity. This phrase would indicate that in ancient placecountry-Israel a day began with sunrise. Some have felt this at variance with the Jewish practice of regarding sunset as the beginning of the next day. <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Cassuto" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Cas"><U>Cassuto,</U></A></FONT> after dealing with the biblical data and the Jewish custom, concludes that there was `only one system of computing time: the day is considered to begin in the morning; but in regard to the festivals and appointed times, the Torah ordains that they shall be observed also on the night of the <I><B>preceding day</B></I>' (U. Cassuto, <I>Genesis</I>, I, p. 29 [his emphasis]). This judgment appears vindicated in the employment of <I>`ereb</I> in Levitical legislation respecting uncleanness. One was considered unclean because of certain acts `until the evening'. <I>{</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Arial" ><I>#Le 11:24</I></FONT><I>, plus thirty times}</I> That is, one was unclean for the duration of the day. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Both YUC's and gappers believe that Gen 1:1 “In the beginning, God created …” is the beginning of time, and both of us believe that there are approximately 6,000 years from day one in Gen 1:5 until the present. Thus YUC's consider that day one in Gen 1:5 is the first day that ever was, which begins at the beginning of time. Gappers consider that God created the heavens and the earth before that day one began, so that day one to us is not the beginning of time.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>II. Biblical Reasons</B></div> <bR> <div> The Bible does not say that the earth or heavens is 6,000 years old. Six thousand years goes from today back to day one in Gen 1:3-5. God created the heavens and earth in Gen 1:1, to which there is no timeline.</div> <bR> <div> YEC's say that dinosaurs lived at the time of Job because Job 40:15-24 describes a brontosaurus, which Job calls "behemoth". Most Bible expositors think that the behemoth is either a hippopotamus or an elephant, but this is clearly wrong because neither the hippo nor elephant has a tail like a cedar (v17). However, neither is it a brontosaurus because behemoth has a navel (v16). No reptiles have navels because they hatch from eggs. Many modern translations translate the Hebrew word for navel, <I>sharir</I>,  as "muscles". There is no Hebrew word similar to <I>sharir </I>used elsewhere in the Bible which means "muscles". The most similar Hebrew word is <I>sharar </I>in Song of Songs 7:2, which means "navel". Even if it were translated as "muscles", it still does not fit a brontosaurus because a brontosaurus would not have its force in its belly muscles. It's belly would be like that of an elephant, a soft underbelly, which would be its weak point. Also, the first, and therefore most striking feature of the behemoth is that it eats grass in a similar way to a cow.  I really doubt that brontosaurus ate grass like a cow. With its long neck, it probably ate off of trees like a giraffe. (I think I know what the behemoth is, and it is very simple, but for the purposes of defending the gap theory, it doesn't add anything here. If anyone is interested, email me, and I will write it up and post it.)</div> <bR> <div> <I>to be continued</I></div> <bR> <div> The "Gap Theory" is a derogatory name that the Young Earth Creationists (YEC) use to describe the interpretation  that there is a huge time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. I do not object to the term "Gap Theory", because it is a human interpretation, and therefore could be wrong. YEC is also a theory. YEC teaches that the entire universe is 6,000 years old. Gap Theory teaches that mankind and at least the land animals are 6,000 years old, but that the earth and the universe are much older. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>I. Are there valid scientific objections to the universe being 6,000 years old?</B></div> <bR> <div> Young Universe Theorists (YUT) have done a good job of showing how scientific dating is based on false assumptions. The theory of evolution is based not only on false assumptions, but on supporting facts that just are not there. But are there any scientific facts, which YUC's agree are facts, which demand that the universe is much older than 6,000 years?</div> <bR> <div> <B>A. Observable birth and death of stars 13B light years away</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>If the whole universe is only 6,000 years old, how is it that through telescopes, we can see events happening to stars which are 13 billion light years away? We see stars which are 13 billion light years away being formed and others turning into super novas and burning out. </B></div> <bR> <div> A common, but not well thought out, YUC explanation is that when God created the stars, He created them with their rays extending to the ends of the universe. I do not have a problem that God could do that, but it doesn't match what we see. If that were the case, then for any star > 6,000 light years away, we would still be seeing that initial ray of light which God supposedly created along with the star. To our eyes, those stars should never change. We should never see the birth or demise of a star > 6,000 light years away, but we do.  When we see a star 13 billion light years away tuning into a super nova, we are seeing an event that took place 13 billion years ago.</div> <bR> <div> YUC's have some very strange ways of explaining this. One answer is that the speed of light has slowed down and used to be much faster that it is now. For us to see stars 13 billion light years away, that would mean that the speed of light had to slow down by a factor of 2 Million over the past 6,000 years.  The speed of light is the most basic constant of the creation, like the electrical charge on an electron or proton. Change these significantly, and the universe falls apart. There is no evidence for such a change in the speed of light. According to the theory of relativity, (which unlike the theory of evolution has observable facts to back it up), if the speed of light had been much faster, then time would also have had to have been much faster by the same ratio, negating any effect on time.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>B. </B><B>What happened to the Dinosaurs?</B></div> <bR> <div> YUC's agree that dinosaurs once dominated the earth. If God created the dinosaurs on day 6 of Gen. 1, then He must have saved them with Noah on the ark. Why are there none around today? or even 2,000 years ago? Since 2 of every kind of creature was saved on Noah's ark (Gen 6:19-20), then all kinds of dinosaurs must have been saved on Noah's ark. Why are they all extinct? Not one of their kinds remains. Why did God go to the trouble of creating them, and saving them on Noah's ark if they were going to all be extinct a short time after that?</div> <bR> <div> YUC's have different answers. One plainly wrong answer is that  today's lizards are actually small dinosaurs, adapted to today's environment. This is factually wrong. All living reptiles are fundamentally different than dinosaurs. All living reptiles are creeping things. Their legs, if they have them, come out of the sides of their bodies, not from underneath. Dinosaurs were not creeping things. Their legs came out from the undersides of their bodies, like today's land mammals, except they were reptiles.</div> <bR> <div> Other YUC's say that the dinosaurs could not adapt to the new earth environment after the flood, and they all died because they were too big. But many dinosaurs were small. Certainly most were smaller than an elephant. If they could not adapt to the environment after the flood, why did God go to the trouble of saving them on the ark? Why did He create them in the 1st place? All of the creatures that God created had tremendous ability to adapt to changing environments due to the richness of the gene pool that God created in them. What was the matter with God's creating ability that He failed to do that with the dinosaurs?</div> <bR> <div> Answers in Genesis (YUC site)  gives the following explanation: "After the flood, around 4,300 years ago, the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and man's activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out. Why the big mystery about dinosaurs?"</div> <bR> <div> Why the big mystery?  What other entire category (superorder) of creatures has become extinct? God gave His creatures the ability to adapt to climatic change, lack of food, etc. God cares for all His creatures (Job 38:39-41). What other species became extinct do to acts of God and not of man? Most of the species which have become extinct in modern times are not  species according to the Bible definition of a "kind" or according to Darwin's definition. Darwin's definition of a species corresponds to the Bible's kind: animals are the same species if they can produce fertile offspring. Today's scientists teach Darwin's definition in theory, but practice something else. They consider animals to be different species if their DNA is sufficiently different. If you look at the list of extinct species, the vast majority are the same types as existing species. For example, the vast majority of extinct birds are flightless birds on remote islands. These flightless birds got to these islands such as Hawaii and New Zealand by flying there. Because there were no land animals, these birds filled niches normally occupied by land animals. By the intelligent gene passing mechanism created by God, later generations lost the ability to fly in exchange for other abilities which were in the original God-created gene pool of the species. The flying ancestor and the flightless descendant were still the same species. When man introduced real land animals to the island, they wiped out the flightless birds, and scientists say that a species was wiped out. But the flying ancestor is still alive and well.</div> <bR> <div> Mammoths, Mastodons and Saber Tooth Tigers are 3 creatures that went extinct in ancient times. Even though these creatures did not dominate the earth as dinosaurs once did, there is ample evidence of human coexistence with them. I think Mammoths and Mastodons were the same species as today's Elephants. Noah only took 2 of each kind, so the characteristics of the Mammoths and Mastodons were lost. Similarly a Saber Tooth Tiger was probably the same species as a tiger, just as a Siberian Tiger is the same species as a Bengal Tiger. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>2. If dinosaurs were part of the present creation, what happened to the them?</B></div> <bR> <div> If God created the dinosaurs on day 6 of Gen. 1, why are there none around today? or even 1,000 years ago? Since 2 of every kind of creature was saved on Noah's ark (<A HREF="gaptheory_l.htm#gen6_19" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Gap Theory, Young UniverseTheory and Day">Gen 6:19-20</A>), then dinosaurs must have been saved on Noah's ark, if they were part of this creation. Why are they all extinct? All of them. Why did God go to the trouble of creating them, and saving them on Noah's ark if they were going to all be extinct a short time after that.</div> <bR> <div> YEC's have different answers. One plainly wrong answer is that  today's lizards are actually small dinosaurs, adapted to today's environment. This is simply and factually wrong. All living reptiles are fundamentally different than dinosaurs. All living reptiles are creeping things. Their legs, if they have them, come out of the sides of their bodies, not from underneath. Dinosaurs were not creeping things. Their legs came out from the undersides of their bodies, like today's cattle, except they were reptiles.</div> <bR> <div> Other YEC's say that the dinosaurs could not adapt to the new earth environment after the flood, and they all died because they were too big. 1stly, many dinosaurs were small. Certainly most were smaller than an elephant. If they could not adapt to the environment after the flood, why did God go to the trouble of saving them on the ark? Why did He create them in the 1st place? All of the creatures that God created had tremendous ability to adapt to changing environments due to the richness of the gene pool that God created in them. What was the matter with God's creating ability that He failed to do that with the dinosaurs?</div> <bR> <div> Answers in Genesis gives the following explanation: "After the flood, around 4,300 years ago, the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and man’s activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out. Why the big mystery about dinosaurs?"</div> <bR> <div> Why the big mystery? There is no other entire category of creatures that has become extinct. Also, nobody believes that dinosaurs became extinct due to human activities, which is how almost all, if not all, extinctions have happened. God gave His creatures the ability to adapt to climatic change, lack of food, etc. God cares for all His creatures <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="gaptheory_l.htm#job38_39" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Gap Theory, Young UniverseTheory and Day">(Job 38:39-41)</A></FONT>. The YEC's are saying that all the kinds of dinosaurs became extinct through acts of God. I do not know of a single Biblical "kind" has become extinct through acts of God. </div> <bR> <div> <B>II. Biblical Reasons</B></div> <bR> <div> The Bible does not say that the earth or heavens is 6,000 years old. Six thousand years goes from today back to day one in Gen 1:3-5. God created the heavens and earth in Gen 1:1, to which there is no timeline.</div> <bR> <div> YEC's say that dinosaurs lived at the time of Job because Job 40:15-24 describes a brontosaurus, which Job calls "behemoth". Most Bible expositors think that the behemoth is either a hippopotamus or an elephant, but this is clearly wrong because neither the hippo nor elephant has a tail like a cedar (<A HREF="gaptheory_l.htm#job40_15" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Gap Theory, Young UniverseTheory and Day">v17</A>). However, neither is it a brontosaurus because behemoth has a navel (<A HREF="gaptheory_l.htm#job40_15" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Gap Theory, Young UniverseTheory and Day">v16</A>). No reptiles have navels because they hatch from eggs. Many modern translations translate the Hebrew word for navel, <I>sharir</I>,  as "muscles". There is no Hebrew word similar to <I>sharir </I>used elsewhere in the Bible which means "muscles". The most similar Hebrew word is <I>sharar </I>in <A HREF="gaptheory_l.htm#ss7_2" TARGET="TRLX_Left" TITLE="Gap Theory, Young UniverseTheory and Day">Song of Songs 7:2,</A> which means "navel". Even if it were translated as "muscles", it still does not fit a brontosaurus because a brontosaurus would not have its force in its belly muscles. It's belly would be like that of an elephant, a soft underbelly, which would be its weak point. Also, the first, and therefore most striking feature of the behemoth is that it eats grass in a similar way to a cow.  I really doubt that brontosaurus ate grass like a cow. With its long neck, it probably ate off of trees like a giraffe. (I think I know what the behemoth is, and it is very simple, but for the purposes of defending the gap theory, it doesn't add anything here. If anyone is interested, email me, and I will write it up and post it.)</div> <bR> <div> <I>to be continued</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>References:</I></div> <bR> <div> The English translation is from H. C. Leupold's <U>Exposition of Genesis</U>, 1942, Baker Book House, unless otherwise indicated. I consider Leupold to be the best Christian Bible-believing authority on Biblical Hebrew.  His exposition supports the Young Universe Theory that the universe is 6,000 years old.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>