COSMOLOGY

SUPPLEMENT # I

SIX THEORIES TO EXPLAIN THE SIX DAYS OF GENESIS ONE.

We shall skip the time of creation, for the present, until we deal with this subject of the six days. Almost all real fundamentalists of the literal school of Bible Interpretation, believe they are literal 24 hour periods, "The Young Earth" theorists as well.

SIX THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF CREATION (With many variations)

(1) They say, "Since the story in Gen. 1, and 1 is too far back in prehistoric times, it is entirely unrealiable as history, but is like all other cosmoganies only PURE GUESS WORK, therefore has no historical reference at all." In other words, "Just forget it, leave it alone." It is no theory of creation at all. Most modernists so consider it. Therefore, no theory of creation is needed at all to explain the six days. It is nothing but a fairy tale, only an allegory."

(2) Close akin to that one, and no better at all, "The six days have been called "Topical Pictures", Kurtz calls them "Dreams, Wiseman, "Visions." So do all the new evangelicals who spiritualize the whole first 10 chapters of Genesis as "Allegorical and PreHistory". So Carl Henry in "Christianity Today", and the so called "Neo-orthodox" - (Neo New like the misnomer "New Evangelicalism" - equals "The New Gospel".) "The six days are not literal days, but epochal, idealistic, pictorial." That is, God reveals the 14 to 6 billion years, now 20 billion, of creation in 6 pictorial days (not real days, but pictures called "days".) (They do not explain the 7th day) so Kurtz, "They are not literal days of 24 hours, but geological ages." They explain it, "The six days are figurative days, or epochs of revelation, written upon 6 epochal tablets called "days". So, "First day" tablet, "Second day" tablet, handed down for centuries. Six tablets called "days", all to try to reconcile the Bible and evolution, making the Bible pay all the concessions.

(3) Akin to that one, "Just an early church myth, allegorical to teach a spiritual truth, not historical or literal. Not real events at all. The building of spiritual truth on a historical lie. Shows their estimation of the worth of the Bible. They all show greater respect and consideration of ever-changing "science" than to the infallible Word of God.

(4) Very common, "The six days are geological ages, not 24 hours, or even years could be millions or billions of years. It places all the geological ages in the 24 hour allegorical 6 days.

(5) The six days are literal 24 hour days, of actual creation. All the universe was created in one week of six days, of 24 hour periods. i.e. That all of creation is but 6000 years old. This is a new teaching by many for an admirable reason, to combat the billions of years needed by the evolutionists to get the changes they see in nature. This teaching, as far as the literalist are concerned, is recent. A lot of the

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spiritualizes, in days gone by still tried to encompass all in six days, but left out all particulars. Most of Dallas Theological Seminary holds to this in "The Bible Science Newsletter", put out by the Institute for Creation Research, Whitcomb and Morris, in "The Genesis Flood", and others. "The Young Earth Advocates", or "The Young Earth Theory". Now none of us were there, nor can any science really prove it or disprove it, in spite of the efforts they use. It has to be a matter of Bible
interpretation, not science or philosophy.

(6) "The Gap Theory", or "Catastrophic Theory" was the only real one when I went to Bible school. And I still adhere to it, the Scofield Bible has it, Larkins, most of the Bible teachers of the last hundred years, until now. Gen. 1:1 is of a perfect creation, Gen. 1:2 is a catastrophe, wrecking of the original perfect creation, and Gen. 1:2-29 and Chapter 2 is of a restoration in the six days, not a recapping of the original creation. * We will see that number 6 is the one to which I adhere.

I. First let us see if the days of Gen. I, are literal 24 hour days or ages. Are the six days long geological ages, long millenniums, or millions of years, or twenty four hour days. This is primarily the ruse of the theistic evolutionist to reconcile the Genesis account with evolution. "So they were long epochs, and not days at all, but periods, and a GRADUAL CREATION, by long natural forces", as Bernard Ramm teaches, "Progressive Creation". There is no way the Bible can be squared with evolution, both can not be true. One is a lie, and there is no doubt which.. . someway or other man believes it would have been easier for God to so create the world. . but it is no easier or harder for God to make a flea or an elephant, an atom or a universe. If He cannot make it in 24 seconds, He couldn't make it in 24 hours, or 24 billion years. Creation is not only difficult, but impossible to all but God.

The Hebrew "Yom" translated "day" occurs 1181 times in the Heb. O.T. There are 67 times that it occurs in the general sense of a period of time, like, "Mans day", "The Lord's Day", "Day of Trouble", etc., 30 times along the same general vein, "today" if ye will hear his voice etc. But over 1000 times it is used of 24 hour day. So it is admitted that the Heb. "Yom", day is used in a figurative sense, as a general term for a period of time.
But:
(1) Where "yom", day, is used with a qualifying numeral (Cardinal or Ordinal) in a series, as "the first day", "second day", "3 days and 3 nights", etc. it is always literally a 24 hour day, I know of no exception. They argue, "since day is sometimes used for an indefinite period, it must be in every case where they want it to be.

(2) But even more graphic and certain, wherever the Heb. uses the expression "the evening and the morning were the first day" (Starting 6 p.m. to 6 p.m.) IT IS ALWAYS A LITERAL 24 HOUR DAY THAT IS MEANT, since it is a circumscribed period of time marked out by "an evening and morning". As in the fourth day, 1:14Ä19, when the sun ruled, not a million year day, of sunlight, and no night. Only on the 7th day is the

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"evening and morning" omitted, since creation is finished, but certainly not rest a 1000 years (cf. #5)

(3) Where did the idea of the week start, of 7 days? Each with 24 hours? and the 7th of rest? If not started here at creation, instituted and fixed for all time, and our bodies times to it automatically. The order of the 7 day week was here long before Moses got the law. It isn't founded in the stars, planet, sun, moon, nor any celestial motion, but based upon human need as God knew. (See Ex. 20:8Ä11, shows it was His Creation. Certainly Moses, by inspiration, so considered it a 24 hour day of rest.)

(4) Adam was created on the 6th day, if geological age, then he lived through the seventh if a million years. Pretty old, under somewhere in earth yet, and 994,000 years yet to go.

(5) From the very first day. there was the division between light and darkness marking the days into "DAY AND NIGHT". If they were geological ages, millions of years of light and millions of years of darkness, there could be no creation at all.

(6) In vs. 5, "And God called the light day, and the darkness night, and the evening and the morning were the first day." Here is the very plain common sense interpretation of the language, understood by everyone of the common people to whom the Bible was written. There can be gotten no hidden obscure meaning of geological ages of emergence out of some caotic evolving universe, but of literal 24 hour days. As in 1:5, "And God called the light day and the darkness night, and in 1:14, one of the purposes of the sun and moon and stars was "to divide the day from the night" and was for signs and seasons and for days, and years. "The language is plain, days here is contrasted to signs and seasons and years.

(7) If the 6 days are millenniums or billions of years, then so is the 7th. God rested for a billion years, and man is also to rest for a billion years. Everywhere the seventh day in the Bible is a 24 hour day of rest. Look at 2:1Ä3, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work, which he had made and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." Gen. 1:1 and 1:3-2:3 (Ex. 20:8-11 again)

Now the question still remains between the last two theories of 6 days, is when? Both the "young earth theorists", and the "gap theorists", believe in an instantaneous creation by the Word of God's mouth. The question is of the time of it. Was all of creation only 6000 years ago or was the original creation millions of years ago, destroyed, and then restored? There is no question of modernism, unbelief, denial of God's Word in either one. (Though in the writings of the Young Earth theorists, they have a habit of equating all Old Earth theorists with evolution, which is an error) I'm certainly not. I admire the purpose of the Young Earth theorists, i.e. to combat the untold millions of years the evolutionists require for man to have evolved, and their denial of the literal Bible interpretation. But I still believe the 6000 year age

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of earth. The "Young Theorists" raise more questions than they solve, in science, of geology, astronomy, paleontology, but also in Bible interpretation since they have to place the fall of Satan after the creation of Adam in this present creation, and of necessity, making demons and angels synonymous.

Again, there is no doubt at all from every geneological table, and from all the plain statements of the Bible man has not been on the earth but some 6000 years or a little more, we cannot subscribe to the geneological table of time set by Archbishop Usher (James) of Ireland. His time table is not inspired. He dogmatically and specifically FIXED the date of creation of all things at 4004 B.C., Oct. 26, 9:00 am., Greenwich time and, 4:00 a.m. E.S.T. (That's accuracy, wherever he got it?)

Nor likewise, is there any question of God's ability to do it any way He wanted to, but How did He do it? Nor is the question settled. by Science, or by Scientists. No one now living was there to observe it. It is purely a question of Revelation. HOW and WHEN does God say He did it? There are all kinds of scientific arguments that can be marshalled for each side.

There was a large group of scientists who were anxious to know what happened way back there at creation, they had created a brand new master computer. They gathered around it, fed into it all the latest data from all the sciences. They waited with bated breath around the computer. It ground away, lights flashed all over the board, the great computer shook,
relays snapped, tapes ground away, bells rang, then to their expectant eyes there popped out a card. One grabbed it and looked at it, and it had these words, "See Genesis 1:1".

The Young Earth theorists try to place all catastrophisms at the time of the flood, all the abundant evidences on earth of great upheavals as seen in Velikovsky's "Earths in Upheaval". The earth gives evidence of the greatest kinds of upheaval. As the great coal and oil deposits hundreds and even thousands of feet under the surface, the Bible statement of the flood and of the ark's weathering, it doesn't bear out that they all occurred then. The raising of the mountain chains, some five miles high, some six, in several great chains, from pole to pole, and even the absolute inversion of vast strata of earth's surface, by thousands of feet; in "Worlds Before the Flood" by Figuier, "The earth has suffered great mutations at some former period, everywhere wasted on its surface," The Flood cannot possibly give the answer to all the great catastrophies
that the earth evidences.

You may say, "What difference does it make whether the earth is 6000 years old or 4 billion? Created in six days all things, or back in a former creation?" It is were only a matter of geology, guess work, etc., No matter at all. But there is, to my mind, the raising of unneccessary  conflict in the natural sciences such as geology and palentology and physics, with theology, or Bible interpretation. There is enough conflict without raising others. But in the matters of interpretation
itself, and angelology, the fall of Lucifer, and the matter of demons, the whole interpretation of Satan's rulership of this earth, a lot of Bible Doctrine is at stake.

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The very vagueness of those advocating a 6000 year old creation on the whole subject of angelology, their confusing of angels and demons, and of Satan's rulership over the earth, shows up the strained position they take. We have to review here briefly our earlier Satanology.

Geologically, the Eden of Ez. 28, and the one in which God placed Adam and Eve cannot be identical. Satan was Lord of that one in Ez. 28, Adam of the Genesis Eden. The glorious discription of Ez. 28 cannot possibly fit Adam's. God planted a special Eden for Adam, Gen. 2:8, "And the Lord God planted (speaking of a specially prepared local place, not of the whole earth, this just for man, localized) eastward in Eden, (vs. 15) "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress and keep it. Lucifer didn't have to do any keeping. Nothing is said here of Lucifer being in Adam's garden, he never had access to Adams, until as tempter, he approached the woman after they were put on
probation. Lucifer's Eden was geological, "Stars of Fire". Adam's Eden was Botanical, "Planted" and "good for food". Gen. 2:9 The description of the Eden in Ez. forbids the confusing of the two gardens. "Every precious stone was Lucifer's covering, called "the Holy Mountain of God," walking up and down in the midst of the stones of fire." No stones of fire in Adam's Garden of Eden.

This also brings out the whole question of When, and Where did Lucifer fall? It couldn't be out of this Garden of Eden. It was very Good, perfect, and Holy. God didn't put Adam into a fallen garden. Lucifer didn't fall out of this garden of Eden. But he was fallen already, since he was a fallen sinful creature to tempt Eve as soon as she is put under probation. So When and Where, if not in a prior creation, in a prior Garden of God?

But a greater question of Bible interpretation is involved, When and Where was Satan made "RULER of this world"? A title Jesus gave to him, three times: mo. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11 - "archon" - "ruler", and he still holds as a "principality" "Ruler" a teaching the Bible gives in a number of places, as we saw earlier. Adam was given universal dominion over this present
creation. (Gen. 1:29) "And God blessed them, and God said, "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". He had that until he fell, not Lucifer in this creation, until Adam fell, the original grant to Lucifer reinstated. This great Bible teaching which explains so well all the control Lucifer has over the nations, as well as individual, makes so much of the Bible understandable, as well as the course of History, and a lot of prophecy. "As he shall be able to deliver to the Antichrist all the kingdoms of the world." (Rev. 13:1Ä3) He has them to deliver, "All
the world lieth in the lap of the wicked one", (and the idea is, "lying in carnal security").

Jesus called Satan 3 times "The Prince, (or "Ruler", archon) of this world". Believe it, he has them, he offered them to Jesus and He refused them. He shall offer them to the Antichrist and he shall accept them. Paul calls him, "The ruler of the power of the air." In Job 1 and 2, he had to appear before God with the other angelical rulers to give account

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of his princedom over the earth. Paul says, "We have been translated from the power of darkness (Cal. 1:13, Power -"Authority"-exousia) used of Satan's kingdom several times as Rev. 15:2, to the kingdom of God's dear Son." So in Is. 14:13, "I will set my throne above the stars of God". Has He a throne to set? "Where did he get it, and when? It could not
have been after Adam's creation, since Satan's throne is on this earth, and so was Adam's. It had to be over a prior creation in Gen. 1:1. This agrees with the "VERY GOOD" of God's pronouncement over the creation in which He placed Adam. If Satan had already fallen, then his kingdom was fallen at the same time Satan fell, and his subjects and his earthly
realm. It is no wonder the Young Theorists are vague on Satan's fall, the When, the Where, and the order of events. Satan was already fallen when God made Adam, but how if the earth is only 6000 years old? Where in here can he be placed? The fall of Lucifer and his vast kingdom, as well as his earthly princedom, could not be in the "very good" creation of Adam's. He must have had subjects, not just angels, since none of the angels are subjects of this earth, but all are "angels of heaven", not made for earth, except as ministering spirits". So "ascending and descending" both on Jacob's ladder and upon Jesus Himself. (Gen. 28:12 cf; mo 1:51) As we have seen, we believe the demons were the subjects, but not in this present creation.

There is little doubt that Satan and his angels and demons were locked up - imprisoned in Sheol, in the bottomless pit, in the recreation period of Gen. 1 & 2 and during Adam's sovereignty, until Adam fell, as all of his hosts will be locked up during the 1000 year millennial reign of Christ.
Rev. 20:1Ä4

It is a shame that the Young Earth theorists in many articles, and books, have a tendency to link the Gap Theorists of by gone days as evolutionists.

The agreements between Gap Theorists & Young Earth Theorists are vast:

(1) Instantaneous Creation believed and taught by both
(2) Opposed to gradualism or uniformitism of all evolutionists
(3) Catastrophism - Cataclysm vs uniformitism or gradualism
(4) Canopied Earth Theory
(5) Noahic Flood as worldwide
(6) So all created by God. It is just when and how, but
primarily "WHEN".

There is a difference in the total age of earth and Pre-Adamic Creation - and Race with Lucifer as Arche or Ruler - "Prince", and the 6 day, 6000 year old age of man on the reorganized earth.