Today Not God's Original Creation

Theology
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You might want to read these verses again.

Heb 2:14
14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
KJV

1 John 3:8
8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
KJV

Physical death existed prior to Adam and Eve, but not for man, for there was no flesh man back at that time of the dinosaurs. The first world age was an ANGELIC EXISTENCE UPON THIS EARTH. And nor do dinosaurs exist today (unlike new-earth creationists in Kentucky try to say with their fake park).

The image I uploaded is of a perfect human arch footprint stepped upon by a dinosaur. It was discovered at Dinosaur State Park in Glenrose, Tx. There’s been other areas of the world that have found this same kind of artifact. But NO HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS have every been found back to the time of dinosaurs. It’s because that human footprint is that of an ANGEL, back to the time that dinosaurs walked this ancient earth. That human footprint also DISPROVES EVOLUTION THEORY. So trying to use Darwin as an excuse for the Gap Theory just does not hold water.

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No mention of a flood. You’re adding that to the text.

The problem with your reading of this text is that you are failing to locate the text in the appropriate ancient near eastern context it is supposed to be read.

Yes, Genesis 1:2 is describing an already created earth covered by waters–not a flood, but by waters. The waters of Genesis 1:2 are the primordial waters–the waters which are later divided between the lower waters (the seas) and the upper waters (the firmament), and which are then divided by the separation of dry land from the waters.

This was a very natural way for ancient people to think about the world. The primordial waters in a sense represent chaos, from which God brings order. The days of creation are an act of divine ordering. We behold an un-ordered world here in the beginning, that is why the earth is “without form and void”, the Hebrew more accurately means something like “a formless waste”.

The act of creation is about a divine ordering. The days of creation form a framework of divine order; the first three days involve ordering by separation. That’s why there is a separation between light/dark (day/night), a separation between upper and lower waters, and then a separation between waters and dry land; those are the first three days. The latter three days are acts of filling: the sun, moon, and stars are created to fill and rule day and night, the creatures that fly and swim are created to fill and rule the skies and seas, and the creatures that run, creep, and crawl are created to fill and rule the dry land.

The final creative act, the creation of human beings uniquely made in the Divine image are created to “have dominion”, that is they are given the agency to rule all of creation, as God’s divinely appointed representatives within creation.

In the ancient world the way temples were built involved a process of establishing the sacred space, then filling the sacred space, with the final act being the installation of the divine representative–in the pagan world that meant idols.

Genesis 1 is a story of temple creation; only the temple is God’s own design, and it is the heavens and the earth–it’s the entire created order. So God establishes the space, fills the space, and then finally installs the divine representative. The Divine image is not an idol created by men, it is human beings created by God. Who are divine representatives intended to rule and serve–to be kings and priests.

This language of king and priest carries throughout Scripture, and we find it eschatologically when we read about how, ultimately, God is going to restore and fulfill this by establishing His Church as kings and priests forever in the new and restored creation.

Genesis 1 is describing the ordering–the creation–of the whole cosmos as orchestrated by the one true God, using language that is familiar to ancient people, and in ways which were deliberately contradictory to the stories the pagans told one another about their false gods. In the creation stories of Israel’s neighbors, a lot of the same motifs are present (such as the primordial waters of chaos) but the divinely inspired creation story in Genesis 1 takes those motifs and turns them on their head.

It is God who is before everything, whose Divine Presence and Breath flutters above the primordial waters, and who then gives order by His own word to all things. That is a beautifully poetic way of declaring the truth of who God is, of creation’s relationship to the Creator, and humanity’s place as the divinely-ordained representative within creation, all in a way that also undermines the lies of false gods told by Israel’s neighbors.

As for the earth being flooded in Genesis 1:2–well, that’s (once again) total poppycock.

1 Like
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@DavyP You have been quite busy. Let’s take things one at a time, shall we? Let’s set aside for a second that it really does not matter how many think something is right; if it is wrong, it is wrong. A consensus does not make the truth. The truth is. There was a general consensus and a scientific consensus that the Earth was flat. If you say it is, I can’t help you.

So all this consensus, all in agreement. Guess what? Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BCE) said nope. He was right.

His reasoning was aesthetic and philosophical rather than strictly empirical. The Pythagoreans believed the sphere was the most perfect geometrical shape, so celestial bodies, including Earth, must be spheres.

Now I could list many who deny the Old Earth theory, such as George McCready Price (1870–1963), a Seventh-day Adventist writer who largely laid the groundwork for modern “flood geology”.

Henry M. Morris (1918–2006) & John C. Whitcomb (1924–2020): Co-authors of The Genesis Flood (1961), the seminal book that popularized the modern Young Earth movement. Morris also founded the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).

Ken Ham: Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter. He is one of the most visible public defenders of Young Earth Creationism today, famous for his 2014 debate with science communicator Bill Nye.

Jason Lisle: An astrophysicist and author who writes extensively for YEC ministries, defending a young universe using relativistic physics models. Kent Hovind: An independent evangelist and speaker known for his “Creation Seminar” series, who frequently debates old-earth scientists and evolutionists.

John MacArthur: Influential pastor and author who strongly advocates for a literal six-day, young-earth creation view, asserting that old-earth models undermine biblical authority.

Albert Mohler: President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who argues that accepting millions of years introduces physical death before the Fall of Man, which he considers theological error.

I’m not going to keep going; you get the point.

Peter

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You claim Peter’s mention of the Earth “standing out of the water and in the water” refers exclusively to Genesis 1:9, and therefore the “world that then perished” was a pre-Adamic global destruction rather than Noah’s flood.

Peter explicitly references Noah in the immediate context (2 Peter 2:5: “and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah…”). The Framing: In 2 Peter 3:5–6, Peter grounds his argument in creation (how God formed the world using water) to explain how God judged that same world using water in Noah’s day. The phrase "the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished" directly points to the global catastrophic judgment of the Flood, not an unmentioned pre-Adamic destruction.

You keep insisting that Genesis 1:1 is the only creation event, and Genesis 1:2 describes an Earth already ruined underneath judgment waters. This is simply not true. The Hebrew connection between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 uses a disjunctive clause (waw + noun: w’ha’aretz). This describes the initial state of the newly created material as “formless and void” (tohu wa-bohu), not a state of being ruined after a prior judgment.

Throughout Genesis 1, God speaks things into existence (“Let there be…”). To claim no creation happens after verse 1 ignores the clear Hebrew narrative framework of the six creation days.

I love how you reject the term “hermeneutics” (which simply means the principles of biblical interpretation) because it exposes the fact that you are reading a massive, silent narrative into the gap between verse 1 and verse 2. Nowhere in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is a “1st Earth Age” or a pre-Adamic civilization explicitly taught.

Exodus 20:11 directly contradicts a pre-Adamic Earth age:

“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.”

Moses explicitly states that everything in the heavens, earth, and sea was made within those six days. Not in a prior age before Genesis 1:2.

Death entered through Adam, not a pre-Adamic flood:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” Romans 5:12

If a global destruction occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, killing off a “1st Earth Age,” then physical death, destruction, and judgment existed long before Adam sinned. This undermines the foundational gospel teaching that death is the penalty for Adam’s sin.

Jesus defined the beginning of creation with Adam and Eve:

“But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’'” Mark 10:6

Jesus placed the creation of humanity at “the beginning of the creation,” not billions of years or an entire “Earth age” after an initial creation.

While it is true that James Ussher calculated the 4004 BC date, the belief in a literal six-day creation and a young Earth was not invented by him or 19th-century preachers. Early church fathers such as Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Augustine (as well as Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther) held to a literal timeline of thousands of years based on the Genesis genealogies long before Ussher was born.

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I think Johann may love this too, but you claiming tohuw means “an original state that went bad.” That is a textbook example of the Root Fallacy and Selective Evidence.

Tohuw (תֹּהוּ) means formless, empty, waste, wilderness, chaos, or non-entity. It does not inherently carry the cause of its state (i.e., it does not mean “ruined by judgment”). It simply describes a state lacking form, purpose, or inhabitants.

Deuteronomy 32:10 (“waste howling wilderness”): A natural desert isn’t a ruined civilization; it is an uninhabited, desolate, uncultivated land. 1 Samuel 12:21 & Isaiah 40:17 (“vain / nothing”): Tohuw here means empty, worthless, or lacking substance (idols, worldly power). It means “worthless,” not “a previously perfect state that was destroyed.”

Job 6:18 (“they go to nothing”): Streams dry up into emptiness. None of those verses demand or require a “previous perfect state.” They describe emptiness, uselessness, or lack of structure.

Your mic drop, or “smoking gun,” is Jeremiah 4:23:

“I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”

You claim that because “mountains trembled” here, mountains must have existed in Genesis 1:2. This is a complete failure to understand literary allusion and poetic hyperbole. Jeremiah is prophesying the imminent Babylonian invasion and destruction of Judah/Jerusalem (Jeremiah 4:5–7: “the destroyer of nations is on his way”).

Jeremiah intentionally uses the exact phrase from Genesis 1:2 (tohu wa-bohu) to paint a dramatic, apocalyptic picture of judgment: Judah will be so thoroughly devastated that it will look like the raw, unformed, dark chaos of Earth before God spoke creation into existence. Jeremiah is looking back at Genesis 1:2 and using its vocabulary poetically to describe judgment—Genesis 1:2 is not looking forward to Jeremiah or describing a pre-Adamic war. To argue that Genesis 1:2 means “destruction” because Jeremiah used the phrase metaphorically is reversing the entire cause-and-effect of biblical imagery.

The Grammar of Genesis 1:2 (Hāyətāh)? You rely on the old Scofield argument that Genesis 1:2 should be translated “the earth became [hayah] formless and void” instead of “was.” Here is the problem: when the Hebrew verb hāyətāh (was) is followed by a noun without a preposition (le), it almost universally means “was” (state of being), not “became” (change of state).

The construction wəhā’āreṣ (And the earth…) is a disjunctive clause. It halts the action to describe the background state of the matter God just created in verse 1. It reads: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was [at that initial point] formless and empty…"

Exodus 20:11:

“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and ALL that in them is, and rested the seventh day.”

If God made ALL that is in the heaven, earth, and sea within those 6 days, where does an entire pre-Adamic Earth age, civilization, and dinosaur kingdom fit? Exodus says EVERYTHING was made in those 6 days.

Romans 5:12 & 1 Corinthians 15:21 (No Death Before Adam):

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin…”

Your Gap Theory requires global destruction, mass death, and judgment before Genesis 1:2. If millions of creatures died in a ‘1st Earth Age’ flood, how does Paul say death ENTERED the world through Adam’s sin? You are putting millions of years of death BEFORE sin.

Using a poetic metaphor about the Babylonian invasion to invent a sci-fi, pre-Adamic war is bad exegesis.

Peter

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Let’s try this, Davey: in Hebrew, when hāyāh means “became,” it requires the preposition le (לְ) attached to the predicate noun (e.g., Genesis 2:7, “became a living soul”). Genesis 1:2 lacks this preposition entirely. In Hebrew grammar, hāyətāh without le simply means “was” a state of being, not a transformation.

Moses explicitly wrote in Exodus 20:11: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and ALL that in them is…” Moses doesn’t say God remade an old ruined earth; he says EVERYTHING in existence was made during those six days.

Your theory claims an entire global flood, destruction, and death of a “1st Earth Age” occurred before Genesis 1:2. But Romans 5:12 states: “Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” If billions of creatures died in a pre-Adamic flood judgment, you have death, judgment, and destruction reigning millions of years BEFORE Adam ever sinned. That directly undermines the biblical teaching on the origin of sin and death.

Continued,

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Davey, “before the foundation of the world” (pro katabolēs kosmou) refers to God’s eternal council in eternity past. Before time, space, or matter were created in Genesis 1:1, God didn’t need a “1st Earth Age” to know Adam would fall; He is omniscient. To claim this phrase proves a literal prior world existed reduces God’s eternal foreknowledge to mere reaction to a previous failed world.

At the end of the sixth day of creation, God looked at everything He had made and declared it “very good” (Gen 1:31). If Satan had already rebelled, dragged down 1/3 of the angels, and brought about a global destructive flood before Genesis 1:2, then creation was filled with sin, judgment, and fallen demons. God would not call a world infected with satanic rebellion “very good.”

Ezekiel 28:13 explicitly states Satan was in “Eden the garden of God” when he was created perfect. Eden doesn’t exist until Genesis 2. Satan was created, served in glory, fell through pride, and tempted Eve all within the timeframe between Genesis 1–3. You don’t need to invent an unwritten, silent “1st Earth Age” to explain the fall of Satan.

Continued…

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I do not want to run out of time here. You try to dismiss the phrase “apocalyptic imagery” as a sign of liberal scholarship. The Reality? Apocalypse (alpha\pi o\kappa\alpha\lambda\upsilon\psi\iota\varsigma) is literally the very first Greek word of Revelation 1:1 (“The Revelation of Jesus Christ…”). “Apocalyptic literature” is a standard biblical genre (found in Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Revelation) characterized by vivid symbols, numbers, dragons, horns, and visions. Pointing out that a literal, multi-headed dragon isn’t walking around Earth isn’t “denying the Bible”; it’s reading the genre as God inspired it.

You claim that Revelation 12:4 must be a pre-Adamic rebellion, but he completely cuts the verse in half to avoid its immediate grammatical object. Read the full text of Revelation 12:4:

“His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.”

John explicitly ties the Dragon’s position directly to the Woman giving birth to the Messiah (Jesus). The dragon attempting to devour the male child at birth points directly to Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem (Matthew 2) and Satan’s attempts to destroy Christ.

You have to detach the first half of verse 4 from the second half, inserting millions of years between the Dragon’s tail sweeping the stars and the Dragon standing before the pregnant woman. The text flows as a single continuous vision.

Then you have this. You insist that 7 crowns on the Dragon’s heads (Rev 12:3) versus 10 crowns on the Beast’s horns (Rev 13:1) proves a pre-Adamic kingdom. Not true. In Revelation 12:3, the crowns are on the Dragon’s 7 heads. The heads represent global, overarching worldly empires throughout history (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, etc.) controlled from behind the scenes by Satan.

In Revelation 13:1, the crowns move to the 10 horns. Horns in apocalyptic prophecy represent individual rulers or kings (Daniel 7:24, Rev 17:12). The shift simply shows Satan transferring his spiritual claims of authority into a concrete, political, human confederation in the final era.

John never says, “These 7 crowns were from the age before Adam.” You are reading your own theory into the silence of the text.

Now you admit you are speculating when you bring in the Trilateral Commission, " 3 World Unions," and a “pyramid controlling structure.” Here is the, say it with me, Hermeneutical problem. You accuse others of “following men’s doctrines,” yet you rely on 20th-century geopolitical conspiracy theories to decode John’s 1st-century vision. Scripture interprets Scripture; the 10 horns are defined in Daniel 7 and Revelation 17 as earthly kings, not modern political think tanks.

What time is it? Yes, continued.

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Davey, you bypassed the explicit words of Romans 5:12: “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” Paul uses the word entered (eisēlthen). If a “1st Earth Age” was destroyed by a global flood filled with judgment and mass death before Genesis 1:2, then death didn’t enter through Adam—it was already here. Your theory forces Paul’s statement to be false.

Claiming that death must have physically happened prior because God mentioned it in Genesis 2:17 is a complete non-sequitur. God is God; He can warn Adam about the consequence of rebellion without requiring millions of creatures to have already died in a previous world. God creates laws and state penalties before they are broken.

Paul explicitly states in Romans 8 that the entire creation was subjected to futility and bondage to decay because of the Fall. Creation itself suffers the consequence of Adam’s sin—not a leftover ruin from a pre-Adamic “1st Earth Age.”

The “power of death” (Hebrews 2:14) was not given to Satan in some unwritten pre-Adamic war; death is the spiritual and physical wage of sin (Romans 6:23). Satan became a murderer “from the beginning” (John 8:44) when he brought death upon humanity in Eden. Placing millions of years of destruction, death, and judgment before Adam’s sin completely alters the biblical doctrine of the Fall and Redemption.

Time? Continued..

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Ok I have to wrap this up. Using the Alvis Delk slab from Glen Rose as evidence completely undermines your case. Even leading Young Earth Creationist ministries (like Creation Ministries International) reject the Delk print as a carved forgery. Furthermore, inventing the claim that it is an “angel’s footprint” has zero biblical basis. Angels are ministering spirits; nowhere does Scripture say angels fossilized inside dinosaur mud in a pre-Adamic age.

Again, death was not present in the physical universe until Adam sinned. If millions of dinosaurs and animals died in global catastrophes before Adam, then death was created by God as part of His “very good” creation, rather than being the enemy introduced by sin (1 Cor 15:26).

To maintain the Gap Theory, you have had to invent:

A pre-Adamic flood nowhere mentioned in Scripture.

A global civilization of angels walking on Earth with dinosaurs.

A redefined definition of “death” that exists before sin.

An alternative meaning for Hebrew grammar (hayah) that ignores standard syntax.

Sorry, but that is all wrong.

Be blessed,

Peter

Standard biblical exegesis reads what the text actually says: God created the heavens, the earth, and everything in them in six days (Exodus 20:11), and death entered the world through Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12).

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Amazing how some folks here come up with lies against the actual written Bible Scripture, especially when the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts do not agree with some English translations.

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Try the LXX, and I concur with @PeterC.

Since if we look carefully at Genesis 1:2 in the Septuagint (LXX), we find something quite important. The Hebrew text reads, וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (we-hāʾāreṣ hāyetā tohu wā-bohu), which is literally, “And the earth was formless and empty,” or “waste and empty.” The important Hebrew verb is הָיְתָה (hāyetā), from היה (hāyâ), “to be.” In this context, the text naturally describes the condition or state of the earth.

Gen 1:2 But the earth was unseen and unready, and darkness was upon the abyss, and spirit of God bore upon the water.

The Septuagint translates Genesis 1:2 as ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος (hē de gē ēn aoratos kai akataskeuastos), which can be rendered, “But the earth was unseen/invisible and unformed/unprepared.” The crucial word is ἦν (ēn), the imperfect form of εἰμί (eimi), “to be.” The LXX therefore says the earth “was”, not that it “became.” If the translators intended to express “became,” Greek had a perfectly ordinary verb available, ἐγένετο (egeneto), from γίνομαι (ginomai). But that is not what appears in Genesis 1:2.

This is significant when evaluating the idea that Genesis 1:2 describes a catastrophe that occurred between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, sometimes called the “gap theory.” The argument often depends upon translating the Hebrew הָיְתָה (hāyetā) as “became”: “The earth became without form and void.” But the ancient Greek translators, who were working from the Hebrew text, rendered the verb with ἦν, “was.” The LXX therefore provides no linguistic support for turning Genesis 1:2 into a statement that the earth had previously been ordered and subsequently became chaotic.

There is also an interesting difference in how the LXX translates the Hebrew expression תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu wā-bohu). Rather than translating the two Hebrew words literally, the translators use ἀόρατος (aoratos), “unseen/invisible,” and ἀκατασκεύαστος (akataskeuastos), “unformed, unprepared, or not yet furnished.” The picture is therefore of the earth as not yet ordered, formed, or prepared for habitation. The remainder of Genesis 1 then describes God progressively bringing distinction, order, function, and life to that unformed creation.

So, if we are simply asking what the Septuagint says, Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as something that “was” unseen and unformed. It does not say that the earth “became” tohu bohu. The LXX’s use of ἦν (ēn) is therefore an important piece of evidence when discussing the interpretation of Genesis 1:2 and whether the verse requires a previous catastrophe between verses 1 and 2.

This does not by itself settle every theological question surrounding Genesis 1:1–2, but it does mean that we should be very cautious about building a “gap” between the two verses on the assumption that the Hebrew verb must mean “became.” The Hebrew and the ancient Greek translation both naturally allow Genesis 1:2 to be read as a description of the earth’s initial condition as God begins His work of ordering and filling His creation.

Think of reading Genesis 1 as the Header and chapter 2 the information provided.

2 cents.

J.

1 Like
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Maybe you should do a little more research. Just saying.

Peter

1 Like
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I showed how Hebrew tohuw va bohuw (“without form, and void”) was used in other Old Testament Scriptures, and that gives the context of how those Hebrew words are used in the Hebrew manuscripts. The Septuagint is a translation, and is not a perfect translation from the Old Testament manuscripts. And just because it was popular among Hellenistic times with the Jews still does not make it ‘the authority’ of the Old Testament.

It would be interesting to see what the Massorah scribe’s notes have for that Genesis 1:2 verse. I have a copy of Christian David Ginesberg’s Hebrew Massorah but I’ve not been into it.

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And it does not deal with Genesis 1.2 @DavyP

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Gen 1:2 But the earth was unseen and unready, and darkness was upon the abyss, and spirit of God bore upon the water.

Gen 1:2 But the earth was unsightly and unfurnished, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water.

All you need to do is study the morphology of the Hebrew Scriptures.

J.

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That can also mean Ginsberg didn’t include any Massorah notes on that verse.

And I prefer to believe how GOD HIMSELF said that He did NOT create the earth TOHUW…

Isa 45:18
18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God Himself That formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain (Hebrew tohuw), He formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
KJV

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Right, I see you are not too big on context, and this is circular reasoning.

J.

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That of course is BEARING FALSE WITNESS, so I no longer care to discuss this with you. Believe whatever you want.

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This is not Facebook, Twitter, or X, Davy. You have rather masterfully changed the subject mid-sentence from what we were actually discussing.

We are here to help one another, sharpen one another, and spur one another on as we rightly divide the Scriptures. That requires us to stay with the actual point being discussed rather than shifting the subject when it becomes inconvenient.

J.

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Brethren in Christ:
That above is usually the next strategy used in bearing false witness, an attack upon one’s personal character in attempt to destroy one’s credibility.

Titus 1:10-14
10 For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:

11 Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.

12 One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

13 This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;

14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.
KJV