There seems no way of avoiding the conclusion — if the geological ages really occurred before Genesis 1:2, that is — that God was using the same processes which exist in the present world to develop the pre-Adamic world. Sedimentation, volcanism, and the other present geological processes are clearly evident throughout the geological column. So are disease, decay, and death! And yet, this was supposedly ages before man brought sin into the world, and death by sin. Is God actually the author of evil and death, as the gap theory suggests?
2. The Fall of Satan after the Geological Ages
The great pre-Adamic cataclysm, which is basic to the gap theory, also needs explanation. It needs scientific explanation, for one thing, but more importantly it needs theological explanation. Why would the Creator spend billions of years developing a world and then suddenly reduce it to chaos in a shattering cataclysm? Or why would He allow it to develop on its own, then destroy it and re-create the same plant and animal types that had evolved?
The explanation commonly offered is that the cataclysm was caused by Satan’s rebellion and fall as described in Isaiah 14:12–15 and Ezekiel 28:11–17. Lucifer — the highest of all God’s angelic hierarchy, the anointed cherub who covered the very throne of God — is presumed to have rebelled against God and tried to usurp His dominion. As a result, God expelled him from heaven, and he became Satan, the great adversary.
Satan’s sin and fall, however, were in heaven on the “holy mountain of God,” not on earth. There is, in fact, not a word in Scripture to connect Satan with the earth prior to his rebellion. On the other hand, when he sinned, he was expelled from heaven to the earth. The account in Ezekiel says: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee . . . therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground [or ‘earth,’ the same word in Hebrew]” (Ezek. 28:15–17).
There is, therefore, no scriptural reason to connect Satan’s fall in heaven with a cataclysm on earth. He was banished to the earth as a defeated foe. It seems much more probable that his expulsion to the earth was directly connected with man’s presence on earth. It seems plausible that Satan first became resentful and envious because of God’s great plan for man, and that this was a major factor leading to his rebellion. God cast him to the earth, where he was permitted to test man’s faithfulness to his Creator, to see whether he, too, would desire to “be as gods.”
That Satan was not on earth, at least not as a wicked rebel against God, prior to Adam’s creation is quite definite from Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and . . . it was very good.” As a matter of fact, the next verse indicates that this observation included “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them,” so that everything was good in heaven! Therefore, Satan’s sin must have occurred after man’s creation.
It has occasionally been suggested that man’s creation was God’s response to Satan’s rebellion. The idea is that God is teaching a great object lesson to Satan and his angels; since they had not kept their first estate, God created man in Satan’s place. Then, when Satan brought about man’s fall also, God decided to redeem man in order to demonstrate His power and grace before the watching angels.
There is no doubt that the angels are intensely interested in God’s great work of salvation (1 Cor. 4:9, 6:3; Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12), but this is not because it was an afterthought on God’s part. Rather, it is because their very purpose in being created was to participate in God’s plan for man: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). Throughout all the Scriptures, they are always thus seen as ministering in some way to man, particularly in relation to man’s salvation and growth in grace.
Since the angels were created specifically for service to man, there is no reason to suppose that they were created much earlier than man. They were present to “shout for joy” when God “laid the foundations of the earth” (Job 38:7; Ps. 104:4–5). However, this erection of the lands upon foundations, when they had previously been “without form,” probably refers to the work of the third day of creation, when the dry land was made to separate out of the waters: “and God called the dry land Earth” (Gen. 1:10).
In any case, the angelic rebellion in heaven could have had no effect on the earth and its supposed previous geological ages. Even if, for the sake of argument, it is assumed that Satan’s sin did cause a pre-Adamic cataclysm on earth, that still would not account for the geological ages, with their evolutionary succession of identifying fossils, that had occurred prior to the cataclysm. The whole problem of eons of suffering and death has still not been resolved, for all this occurred not only before Adam sinned, but even, according to the gap theory, before Satan sinned!
3. Scientific Problems with the Gap Theory
The pre-Adamic cataclysm supposedly left the earth completely desolate and uninhabited, submerged in a universal ocean and universal darkness (“waste and void, with darkness upon the face of the deep”). There was no light of the sun, no land surfaces, no vegetation, no animal life, even in the seas. Yet, in the fossil-bearing rocks, there seem to be clear evidences that a great abundance of plant and animal life existed all over the pre-world, on the land and in the sea.
Such a sudden transition from a world teeming with life and activity to one that was utterly ruined and empty, buried in water and darkness, must have required a geological cataclysm of overwhelming magnitude! The whole earth must have literally exploded, perhaps in a great nuclear or volcanic holocaust, destroying all life, causing all land surfaces to slide into the ocean, and filling the skies with such clouds of smoke and debris as to actually blot out the sun.
The problem is this: the pre-Adamic cataclysm has been postulated mainly as a means of reconciling the Bible with geology, but there is not the slightest evidence in the orthodox system of historical geology for such a cataclysm! No geologist accepts the gap theory for this very reason.
The whole system of modern geology has been built upon the dogma of uniformitarianism, not catastrophism. And it is the resulting system of geological ages that the gap theory attempts to pigeonhole between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. One cannot have his cake and also eat it! The geological strata can be explained in terms either of global catastrophism or of uniformitarianism, but not of both together. If the strata were formed by a universal pre-Adamic cataclysm, then there remains no evidence for the geological ages, and , therefore, no need for the gap theory as far as the antiquity of the earth is concerned. One cannot harmonize the geological ages with the Bible by eliminating them!
It should be emphasized as strongly as possible that orthodox geology has no place for worldwide cataclysms. The strata are supposed to be explained by uniformity, by continuity of the processes of the past with those of the present. A worldwide cataclysm that could lead to the condition described in Genesis 1:2 simply does not exist in the standard system of geological ages, and it is unrealistic to identify the ice age or any other such local or regional geological feature with a cataclysm of such universal scope. Such a destructive cataclysm would have completely devastated and disintegrated the sedimentary strata and the fossils that are used as the evidence proving the geological ages.
If, for the sake of argument, it is supposed that there was such a cataclysm but that by some miracle it left the previously deposited strata intact and undisturbed, one still faces the formidable problem of the relation between the fossil world and the present world. That is, the animals and plants preserved as fossils from the world before the cataclysm are in many cases practically identical with those in the present world. In fact, most of the kinds of organisms found in the world today have also been found in the fossils (often larger and more highly developed than their modern counterparts, but nevertheless of the same basic kinds). This is true even of human fossils, and of the various hominid forms suggested as possible precursors of man. This is one reason that various writers