A Matter of Days - Gap Theory

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Genesis chapter 1.
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And this morning we are going to read verses 1 to 5.
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So if you have your place there, we'll, in a moment we'll stand for the reading of the word.
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Before we read the word, I just want to give a few preliminary comments to our message today.
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In our studies so far, we have not avoided controversial subjects.
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We have addressed the fact that God created everything out of nothing.
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That by itself is a controversial statement.
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We believe that God created everything by the divine command, which we call the fiat.
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That by itself is a controversial statement.
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We have discussed that the God who is spoken of in Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God, is not just some generic deity, but that He is in fact the triune God of the Scriptures, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God in three persons.
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And we have discussed that, as Brother Andy just said in his prayer, that this God who is the creator of all things is Himself uncreated.
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He is eternal.
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There was never a time when He was not.
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There will never be a time when He will be not.
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He is everlasting, and He is called the everlasting God.
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These are the things that we have looked at so far.
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But of all of the subjects that we have examined, they all pale in comparison to what we are going to begin discussing today, at least as far as controversy concerns.
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I can honestly say that today's message will be the most controversial message, well, excuse me, let me start again.
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The next few messages, because if you look at the back of your bulletin, you will see what we are going to be talking about.
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I created a chart, and if you think I can preach that whole chart in one Sunday, you have never met me.
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And I am not even sure I am going to be able to do it in two Sundays.
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But I don't want to rush.
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And I don't want to just sit here and give a theological lecture.
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But beloved, we need theology, and we need to know the truths that we confess, and the truths that we do not confess.
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We need to know the difference between truth and error.
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And so sometimes it is incumbent upon the elders of this church to not just come and be root and toot and hellfire and brimstone, but to outlie the theology of the Bible as part of our preaching.
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That is preaching.
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Don't ever think that a theological treatment of a subject is less preaching.
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It's not.
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It's just a preaching of a different kind.
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We're always pointing toward the one final goal of conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ in whatever we study.
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So today again, as I said, today and the weeks to come, we are going to be looking at a subject that I would say is the most controversial we've looked at so far.
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Because we've already talked about the fact that God created the world, but we have not dealt with two big questions.
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We have not dealt with the when.
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And we have not dealt with the how long did it take? When did it happen? And how long did it take? This, again, I will say, will be controversial for some of you.
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Some of you may find yourselves disagreeing with me on some of what I say.
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I'd like to make a couple of points about that.
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Number one, there is great confidence among our elders in what I'm preaching.
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We have discussed it and the things that I'm saying are at least held among the teaching ministers of the church.
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But also, I will say this.
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On this issue, I do think that there are places where we can be gracious with those who might disagree.
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And I'm going to talk about the places where we have to take stands and where places where we might could have some disagreement.
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The reason why I'm bringing this up is because there are whole ministries that have dedicated themselves to this one cause, right? The whole cause of what we would call creationism.
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And while I would not say that those ministries are bad or wrong, I do think that sometimes we can become so fixated on one thing that it's to the detriment of other things.
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And if everything you ever talk about and everything you ever are doing has to do with the creation days, I think you're a little unbalanced.
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If that's all you ever talk about is how long those days were.
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Even though I might agree with you as to what the conclusion of your position is, it's easy to become unbalanced.
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You can be unbalanced on many things.
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You can be an unbalanced Calvinist.
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And the only thing you ever talk about is those five points, right? You can be an unbalanced creationist and all you ever talk about is those days.
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If you allow that to take you away from the center point of the gospel, then you become unbalanced.
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So we got to be careful, right? So even though I believe what I'm going to say and I'm going to take a stand on what I'm going to say, don't allow yourself to become so fixated on one point that you lose everything else.
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Is that fair enough to say? I hope that you understand why I feel the need to make that statement.
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With that being said, we're going to read Genesis 1 verses 1 to 5 with our self standing as we do for the reading of God's word.
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So let's stand.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.
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And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
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And God said, let there be light.
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And there was light.
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And God saw that the light was good.
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And God separated the light from the darkness.
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God called the light day and the darkness he called night.
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And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
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May God add his blessing to the reading of his word, may he write its eternal truths upon our heart, and may he keep me from error as I preach.
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You may be seated.
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Ever so often, my wife will tell me that, hey, this week we're going to Mosh.
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Now, we are a homeschool family.
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So a trip to Mosh is what we consider a field trip.
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So sometime during the week, she'll tell me, hey, this week we're going to go to Mosh.
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If you don't know what Mosh is, Mosh is downtown.
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It's the Museum of Science and History.
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I remember as a kid going to the Museum of Science and History.
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Every once in a while, they would have the dinosaur exhibit.
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And you would go into the dinosaur exhibit and they would have these giant animatronic dinosaurs that you could walk in and you could touch their skin.
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And it felt more like a tire than it did what I imagine a dinosaur really felt like.
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It was made of foam rubber.
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But it was still about as close as you could get to reliving something like Jurassic Park.
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And I remember those days as a child.
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And again, we take our children now to Mosh.
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And inevitably, when we go to the museum, we are confronted almost immediately with a secular explanation of the origins of the universe.
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We walk into the first section and there's a giant model of a whale.
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And in that model of the whale, there is the vertebrae of the whale as it's made.
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And it has the pieces that come out that are the phalanges, which we would call fingers.
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But it fits into the fin of the whale.
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And you see that and there's an explanation.
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It says, you see this vertebrae and you see these bones that extend off the vertebrae? Well, these are prototypical fingers.
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And this is a prototypical backbone.
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And what has happened is over a period of billions and billions of years of slow and gradual change, one single cell with the fortitude to keep going multiplied into another and then into another.
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And it has designed through a complex process of mutation, all of the variation of the species that we see around us.
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From the very smallest minute animal in the creek to the giant elephant, everything has become what it is today through the process of evolution.
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Now, today is not the day that I'm going to challenge evolution.
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I'm waiting for day six.
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Well, maybe day four, five and six when we start looking at the creation of birds and fish and the land-dwelling animals.
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We are going to look at the subject of evolution and challenge it.
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But I want to today talk about the fact that the presupposition of all of that is that the earth is billions of years old.
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That's the initial...
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Because if you don't have billions of years, you don't have the time for the evolution to take place according to the naturalistic view.
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The naturalistic view says these things take time and time is the magic potion.
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Because without the time, you wouldn't have the ability for all these random mutations to take place.
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So the time becomes an indispensable variable in the evolutionary mindset.
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If the earth were only 6,000 years old, there just wouldn't be enough time to produce all of the life through the process of evolution.
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So it can't be 6,000 years old, can't be 600,000 years old, can't be 600 million years old because it's just not enough time.
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It has to be four and a half billion years old.
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And that's just the earth.
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On top of that, the universe has to outdate the earth by an additional 9 billion years, putting the whole universe at around 13 billion years.
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That's the typical answer.
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And again, when you walk into the Museum of Science and History and you see the signs on the wall, you will see that proclaimed as gospel.
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It's not a debate.
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No one is standing up to say that may not be correct or you may be off on your timetable.
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It is accepted as if it were given by God himself.
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The universe is 14 point some odd billion years and the earth is four and a half billion years.
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And most of us can hearken back to a time in our youth where we were exposed to that in school.
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Now, I know some of you are older than me and you maybe had a different school experience than I did.
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But I imagine most of us who are in our 30s and 40s and maybe older went to some form of a public school.
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You know, homeschooling wasn't as popular when I was younger.
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And so I imagine most of you who were public schooled were taught in your textbooks billions of years.
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I mean, am I correct to assume that that was the overriding assumption? It's been the overriding assumption ever since the, well, about the beginning of the 1800s and the introduction of something called uniformitarianism.
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It was a geological doctrine which helped to date the age of the earth.
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And it was introduced by a man named Charles Lyell.
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I'm going to talk about him a little later, maybe in a couple of weeks as it's later in my notes.
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But Charles Lyell introduced a doctrine called uniformitarianism, which basically says this.
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The earth is always going through a very slow process of change.
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And therefore, for anything to develop over time, it takes a lot of time for it to develop.
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And it's sort of the idea like where the Grand Canyon came from.
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Took a whole lot of time and very little bit of water, right? That's the idea, right? And that's uniformitarian geology.
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And the idea is that that's how the earth works.
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And it's sort of just evolution of the earth, right? The earth takes a lot of time to get to where it is because everything's going so slow.
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So it's all based on an idea of time.
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And it's become so ingrained in us that we don't even think to question it anymore.
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It's become so ingrained in us that we don't even, we don't even, we don't even ask anymore.
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We just assume they must be right.
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I mean, even when the movie Jurassic Park, you remember Jurassic Park? Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
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Came out when I was a teenager.
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The Billboard, a movie 65 million years in the making.
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That was the tagline for that film.
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So the assumption is what? These animals lived 65 million years ago.
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That's the assumption.
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And it is believed by most people.
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In fact, it has become so ingrained that if you consider challenging the timelines, you are called unscientific, naive, or just plain dumb.
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Or maybe even uglier words that wouldn't fit the dignity of the pulpit to repeat.
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Certainly, there's no reason to challenge these things for they have scientific consensus.
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Now, I'm going to admit from the first out, I'm going to admit to you today, I am not a scientist.
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I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night.
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I'm not a scientist.
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However, I am a theologian by training and by my life's work.
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So I do have something to say about this issue, but my information is going to come primarily from here.
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And I'm going to look at everything else and I'm going to compare it to what this says.
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Because this is my starting point.
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The word of God.
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Now, are there times where people have made grave errors in the past because they have misunderstood scripture? Sure.
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We could say that there were people who argued incorrectly for slavery during the time of the Old South.
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And they used the scriptures incorrectly.
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And we could say, yeah, there was a time where people had misunderstood what the scriptures said.
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We could go back even further and we could say there was a time when people didn't understand how the sun and the moon and the stars rotate.
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And how the sun is in the middle and the earth actually goes around the sun.
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And so we could say that the difference between what's called heliocentricity and geocentricity, whether the sun is in the middle or the earth is in the middle, that was a question.
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And so there was a time when the church erred in challenging that because they misunderstood the scripture.
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So we have to be careful and we have to be honest and we have to say that there are, in fact, times when we can see something that God has created.
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And then we can compare that to scripture and we can make an adjustment to how we understand things based on simple observation.
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However, having said that, when we discuss creation, creation, as I have noted over the last several weeks, and I've said this many times, creation is a miraculous event.
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It cannot be captured in a laboratory.
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It cannot be repeated in a scientific experiment.
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So when we talk about creation, we have to remember we're talking about a unique event that's unlike anything that we can see today.
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So you understand that there is a distinction to be made between whether or not we're talking about the sun rotating around the earth.
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And we can see that and we can make observations and we can actually do measurements and we can make scientific studies of that.
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But you can't study something coming from nothing when you weren't there.
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You can't study the creation of the universe out of nothing when there's no other precedent and nothing to compare it to.
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It's a unique, miraculous event that has to be considered on its own.
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And people take huge issue when we start talking about creation when we come to one single word.
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And that word is day.
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The word day.
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That's why I call this sermon, and probably the next couple will just be part two, part three, but the title is A Matter of Days.
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Because the question is, what is meant when we see it was evening, it was morning, the first day.
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It was evening, it was morning, the second day.
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This leads to all kinds of questions.
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And we have to try, as good Bible students, to come to a conclusion about what that word means.
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Because that word is going to be the challenging word of the day.
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It's going to be the one that challenges us for the next few weeks.
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Because a bare, simple reading of the text, without any introduction of any interpretation, but simply reading the text, is that God created the world in six days.
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That's not introducing anything else.
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Not introducing what the day means, or how long those days were, or what that means.
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We just simply say, there shouldn't be any debate that God created the world in six days.
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We just have to define what you mean by day.
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And we have to also understand that it's not apologizing for it.
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It's just stating it.
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It doesn't try to explain it.
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It just says it is.
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And people say, well, I don't know if God could create the world in six days.
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Understand this, God could create the world in six seconds.
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So the idea that if He could, go back a few sermons and listen to the sermon that I preached on the power of God.
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In the proclamation of the word.
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Remember when I talked about the very fact that He created by the word of His mouth proves His all-powerful nature, and therefore nothing is a limitation to Him? I wonder why it took so long.
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In a sense, six days is a long time when you could do it in a second.
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So, there you go.
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You begin to have a look.
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In fact, I want to mention again, this is later in the notes, but I'll mention it now.
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This is important.
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You know, Augustine, he didn't believe the days were literal.
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Because he believed it all happened at once.
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And he believed the days were a figurative understanding.
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A lot of people who believe the days are long periods of time, they use Augustine, but they use him incorrectly.
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Because Augustine didn't believe it was long periods of time.
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He didn't even believe it was six whole days.
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He said the earth was created in an instant, and the days are simply there to help us understand what God did.
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But they're really metaphors for something that happened in an instant.
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So, I mention Augustine at this point simply to say, there has not been unanimity down through the history of the church as to the position on this.
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But there has been an overwhelming position of consensus.
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Even though there's not unanimity, we can say there's been an overwhelming position of consensus.
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And the overwhelming position of consensus is the six days, literal 24-hour days.
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You can find people on other positions, but that's the position that holds.
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However, I want to take a step back and say this.
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You won't find that in any confession or creed.
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Why? Because that wasn't the issue they were dealing with.
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Just like you won't find dispensationalism, pre-tribulation rapture, and that stuff in the creeds either.
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And I'm not saying it's not important, but the point is, when you look at history, you won't see six-day creationism and that stuff in the creeds.
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Neither will you see pre-tribulation rapture and that stuff in the creeds, because they were focused on the foundational parts of the faith.
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So again, I'm not saying this is unimportant.
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I'm not saying it's not worthy of study.
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I'm saying this has been a debate, but there has been a consensus.
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And the consensus is six days.
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But let's talk for a moment about the fact that day, the word day, can have different meanings.
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Do you agree with that? Do you understand that the word day doesn't always mean 24 hours? I'll give you an example.
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In my father's day, you could drive across Florida in two days during the day.
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I use the word day three different ways.
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In my father's day, that refers to a time in the past.
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Driving across Florida in two days would refer to two solar cycles, or two 24-hour periods.
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And during the day is distinguishing between daylight and night.
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So you notice right there, in that simple illustration, I showed that the word day can be used in different ways.
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That's often an argument used by people who believe that the days were very long periods of time.
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They say, see, day doesn't always mean day.
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And then the coup de gras is 2 Peter 3.8.
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You know what 2 Peter 3.8 says? For the Lord, a day is as a thousand years.
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So what does that tell us? Well, that tells us that God's timing and our timing is different.
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So, we have variations on the word day.
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And we have to step back and ask the question.
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What did Moses intend for us to believe? Moses is the writer.
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He's under the inspiration and the carrying along of the Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says, holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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He's being carried by the Holy Spirit.
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I always use the word superintending.
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The Holy Spirit is superintending the words to make sure that everything Moses says is right.
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But He's intending it to be understood.
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He's not writing a riddle.
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He's writing it to be understood.
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What did He want us to understand? And therefore, what did God want us to understand? Well, today I'm going to begin to show you four different ways that Genesis 1 has been understood.
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You say, Pastor, why would you give four ways? Why do this? Why confuse us? I'm not intending to confuse you.
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I'm intending to teach you.
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Because this is not an easy position.
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And if I just stood up here and I gave you the typical six day creation view.
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And I didn't propose to you any of these other views and explain to you why I wouldn't hold to those views.
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Then you might go home today and you might do a quick Google search.
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And you might come up with some of these things and you might find yourself in a pit of confusion.
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My job, along with the other four men who serve with me, is to shepherd your souls.
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And to teach you sometimes things you don't even know you need to know.
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And that's part of why I'm doing this.
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I want to teach you things that you might not know you need to know because I think you need to know them.
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And I think this issue of creation is so controversial that there's no way.
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If not you, your kids are going to face this stuff.
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Whether it's when they go to college.
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Or whether it may be when they get older and they decide to visit another church.
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They're going to face some of these things.
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And it's good that you know them.
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It's good that they know them.
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And I hope to show you how this is important when it comes to the state of your soul.
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Not necessarily relating to your salvation.
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But how do you treat the Word of God? Because this point of this whole series, this whole lesson that I've written out.
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Is to say, how are we to approach God's Word? How do we read it? How do we study it? And how do we come to conclusions about it? So I want to invite you to open your bulletin, if you haven't already.
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Look at the back of it.
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You're going to see the four positions we're going to look at.
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Now my expectation for today, because I did such a long introduction for this section.
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Is to only look at the first one.
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But you'll notice there are four positions on the back.
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This is a chart.
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This is a trademark Kiefoski chart.
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This is under patent pending.
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This is our chart.
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I didn't get this off of the internet somewhere.
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These are my notes condensed for you.
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So you could write less and listen more.
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You'll notice there are four positions.
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I'll quickly mention them right now.
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The Gap Theory.
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The Framework Hypothesis.
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Progressive Creationism.
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Young Earth Creationism.
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Now I have done my very best in the production.
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I've read and listened to different proponents of each position.
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I've tried not to be dishonest or unfair for each position.
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Because I think that's important.
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It's no use building up strawmans just to tear them down.
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We want to know what they really believe and why they believe it.
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So we've got four positions.
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My thought is I'll do the Gap Theory today.
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Next week I'll probably do Framework and Progressive Creationism.
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Because I think it's going to take a whole Sunday to do Young Earth.
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Because that's the position I hold.
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And that's going to take some time.
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To break down why I hold that position.
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So you guys ready to get started? Let's do it.
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You've been ready this whole time, right? Let's get started with the Gap Theory.
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First we're going to look at is the Gap Theory.
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The Gap Theory is also called the Ruin and Reconstruction Theory.
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This theory teaches...
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I brought my handy-dandy whiteboard.
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It's just not going anywhere is what's going to happen.
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It's just going to make its home here.
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Basically what the Gap Theory says is this.
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You have Genesis 1-1.
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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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Now you notice I said heaven in singular.
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The Gap Theory proponents make a very big deal about that.
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They say the Hebrew here is supposed to be singular.
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I don't agree with that.
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But I'm not going to make that the point of contention.
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But they will always argue for the singular heaven and earth.
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Because their argument is that heaven that was created was the abode of God.
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And all the angels and everything else.
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That's the heaven that's being referred to.
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It's not talking about the stellar heavens.
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It's not talking about the atmosphere around the earth.
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It's talking about the heaven of heavens.
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So they make a big point about that.
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They say in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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Now comes the really interesting part.
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Remember I called it the Ruin and Reconstruction Theory? Remember? Because they say what happened is that there is a gap of time.
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Between Genesis 1-1.
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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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And then there's a gap of time of unknown length.
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Okay.
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That is the gap in the Gap Theory.
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This could be 100,000, 100,000,000 or 4,500,000,000 or 14,000,000,000 years.
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But it's a gap of time.
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And they say then you get to verse 2.
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Verse 2 is the earth was without form and void.
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And darkness was over the face of the deep.
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Here's what they say.
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How that should be translated is the earth became formless and void.
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You say well what's the difference? Well listen to it again.
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The earth was formless and void.
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That means that's the way it was when it was made.
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But if you say the earth became formless and void.
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What you're saying is that it wasn't like that when it was created.
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That's the way it became.
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And so the word was is re-translated as became.
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And you say well Pastor in the Hebrew what's the difference? Well it is based upon what we call semantic domain.
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It could be either.
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So they're not necessarily wrong.
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The question is how do you translate it into English? It could be was.
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It could be became.
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They're insisting that it means became.
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Because of what they believe happened in the interim.
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Here's what they believe happened in the interim.
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They believe that the earth was created.
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And the heaven was created.
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And it was created wonderful and beautiful and perfect.
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And it was created with a whole host of animals.
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By the way those dinosaurs that you always wonder where they went.
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They lived in the gap.
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So this time period here.
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The gap.
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This is where your dinosaurs are.
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This is also where many of the layers of your sedimentary rock and all those things were formed.
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All of those things.
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All of those old fossils.
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So we just put fossils here.
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They were all created on this wonderful earth.
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And there was also another creature who was created.
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And his name was Lucifer.
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Do you remember Lucifer? Lucifer was called what? He was called the day star.
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He is the one who walked in Eden.
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He is the one who was covered in the precious stones.
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And they made up his garment.
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He was the anointed cherub.
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If we take the Isaiah and Ezekiel passages.
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To be talking about Lucifer and talking about him.
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They would say that this is where we have the fall of Lucifer.
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See Lucifer was like the first Adam.
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In this scheme.
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Lucifer is like the first Adam.
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He is given a world where he is able to rule.
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He walks with power.
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He exists in strength.
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And he is God's most perfect and beautiful creation.
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And he has a horde of beings that serve with him and serve him called angels.
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Brother Adam read this morning from Job 38.
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Which talked about the creation of the angels.
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And how they sang at creation.
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So the gap theorist would say.
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What we have here.
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God has created a world.
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And that world is perfect and beautiful.
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And he created a heaven which is perfect and beautiful.
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And on that earth were all these wonderful creative animals.
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And these beings called angels.
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And one of those angels.
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Wanted to be like God.
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And he became a rebel.
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And he rebelled against God.
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And when he rebelled against God.
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And he took a third of those angels with him in his rebellion.
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He became God's enemy.
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And God as a result of that.
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Responded with destruction.
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Or ruin.
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Did I get the word ruin in reconstruction? So what happened? God flooded the earth.
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Wait a minute.
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God wouldn't do that.
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Well he would.
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Because he does it in Genesis 6 through 9.
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So don't say God wouldn't do it.
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And this is where they say you get to chapter 1 verse 2.
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Because they say in chapter 1 verse 2.
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You find yourself in a place where the earth has become ruined.
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By the fall of Satan.
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And now you have an earth which is covered with water.
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Because of Lucifer's flood.
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And now you have this earth that's destroyed.
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Ready to be rebuilt.
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It's a fantastic story, isn't it? I mean it really is.
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And by fantastic I don't mean good.
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I mean fantastic in the sense that it's so much fantasy.
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And that.
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Now I do want to show you a passage really quickly.
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This is one of the arguments that they make.
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And again it's a good exegete.
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I want to be able to challenge what they're saying by knowing what they're saying.
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Turn in your Bible.
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Keep your Genesis open.
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But turn in your Bible to Jeremiah 4.23.
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We're there.
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Jeremiah 4.23.
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I looked on the earth and behold it was without form and void.
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And to the heavens and they had no light.
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Let me say it again.
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I looked on the earth and behold it was without form and void.
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Where do we hear that language? Genesis 1.2.
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What does it mean in Genesis 1.2? Well we talked about that last week.
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It was formless.
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It was void.
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But what does it mean here? Here it's a result of the judgment of God.
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In the book of Jeremiah this language, Tohu Vabohu in Hebrew, is used to describe the result of the judgment of God.
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So they say, see this is proof.
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Tohu Vabohu over here means judgment of God.
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So when I go back to Genesis 1.2 and I see Tohu Vabohu.
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Let me not even try it.
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Formless and void.
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When I get back over here and I see the same language, it must mean the same thing.
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Therefore, formless and void is the judgment of God.
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So that's one of the arguments.
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We also see similar language in Isaiah 34.11, but it's not as close.
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It doesn't say without form and void, but it does say in the Hebrew it's very similar.
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You wouldn't notice it so much in English.
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So, that's their argument.
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Their argument is that throughout the Bible we see spaces of time between verses.
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So there's no reason why we shouldn't expect to see spaces of time between these two verses.
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Genesis 1.1 tells us about a creative event.
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Genesis 1.1 doesn't tell us though that in that creative event there was a fall, a rebellion, and a judgment.
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And in that judgment, God had to bring a destruction.
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And He brought the destruction in Lucifer's flood.
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And in that flood, out of that flood, He created the earth out of that.
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That's the gap theory as best I can explain it.
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And you say, boy, that was a lot of information.
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You say, why would you share this with us, Pastor? Well, again, I'm going to tell you why.
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Number one, I'm going to tell you what the strengths are in this argument.
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Why people believe this.
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Number one reason why people believe this.
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It has been believed by some pretty prominent theologians in the last 200 years.
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One of the most surprising is a man by the name of A.W.
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Pink.
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Now, if you're a theologian and you've studied, Pink is a big name.
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Pink's systematic theology books, his books on the attributes of God, they're some of the best writing and reform scholarship that I know of.
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And yet Pink believed this.
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So right away, I'll read what he wrote.
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He said this, The unknown interval between the first two verses of Genesis 1 is wide enough to embrace all the prehistoric ages which may have elapsed, but all that took place from Genesis 1, 3 onwards transpired less than 6,000 years ago.
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So basically what he's saying is this.
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Genesis 1, 2 and on is 6,000 years ago.
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But this period of time is unknown.
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Could have been billions of years.
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You see what Pink is doing is he's acquiescing to the modern position on age and he's trying to find a place to put it.
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He's like, I need a place to put this time because everybody in science is saying it took this long.
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So I've got to find a place to put it.
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Here's a spot.
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Here's a gap and I can shove a few billion years in there.
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And hey, I need to find out too.
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When did Satan fall? Well, here's a long period of time.
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Boy, talk about just finding a place to put stuff.
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I've got to find a place to put stuff and it becomes that.
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So A.W.
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Pink held that.
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How many of you have ever heard of the Schofield Reference Bible? Really, only a few of you? I don't know if you're all Baptist background, but Baptists know the Schofield Bible.
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My hope is built on nothing less than Schofield's notes and Moody Press.
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That is the Baptist belief.
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And they have the Schofield Bible.
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If you have a Schofield Bible at home, open it up to Genesis 1.
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And you will see the gap theory was taught by C.I.
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Schofield in the notes of his Bible.
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And it's still held in the Schofield Bible today.
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There's another one that's not as popular, but some of you may have heard of it.
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The Dake's Annotated Reference Bible.
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Pretty popular in the last century.
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Dake's Annotated Reference Bible also contains the gap theory.
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So again, it is not without some theological pedigree.
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What is another strength that it holds? Well, it answers the question of what happened to cause Satan to fall? And when did it happen? We don't know that answer, but the gap theory posits an answer.
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We know Satan fell, right? Is it clear enough to say that Satan wasn't created the way he was, but he fell from a position? God created good things and they become bad things.
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God doesn't create bad things.
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So we can, just by the extrapolation of the nature of God, know that Satan wasn't created the way he is, he became the way he is.
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But we don't know when he became the way he was.
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The gap theory says it happened before Genesis 1-2.
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I hope to argue later in this time, when we get to Genesis 3, I hope to argue that it didn't happen until after God created on the seventh day and rested that Satan fell, but we'll talk about that later.
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But this is their position, so I'm showing you.
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The strength of their position is it gives an answer to a question.
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The question is, when did Satan fall? They say it happened in the gap.
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What's another strength of this position? Well, here's the one that really is the one that I think so many people hold it for.
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It gives an answer to the issue of the age of the earth.
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I mean, from their perspective.
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They say, I gotta find a place to put these billions of years.
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Here's a gap, here's where I put the billions of years.
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So those are its strengths.
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It's got some theological pedigree.
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It answers the question, at least from a sense position, about angels and demons and where they came from.
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And it seeks to bring scientific discovery on the age of the earth into consensus with the age that the Bible seems to indicate that the earth is.
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So those are the three things that I would say are strengths of the position.
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Now, what are the weaknesses? This is where we're really going to get down into it, because this is the big important part I want you to hear.
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All of this has led to this.
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What are the weaknesses? Number one, if you're taking notes, please, this is the time.
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What are the weaknesses of the gap theory? Number one, it is an argument from silence.
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Because it just ain't there.
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This is what in theology we call an argument from silence, meaning that it's not stated in the text.
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It is inferred into the text.
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It's assumed to be there without it actually being there.
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And what it's saying is that Genesis 1, 3 and following is not about creation, but about restoration.
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It changes the whole narrative, if it's correct.
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So not only is it an argument from silence from something that isn't there, but it changes the whole sense of what the narrative is saying.
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Jim Boyce said this in his commentary.
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He said, One serious criticism of the gap theory is that it gives one of the grandest and most important passages in the Bible an unnatural and perhaps even a peculiar interpretation.
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It's just not the natural reading.
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If you read Genesis 1, 1 and then read Genesis 1, 2 without me having told you any of this stuff today, and you naturally say, Yeah, there's a gap there and there's millions of years and there's angels and a fall and a flood.
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Yeah, you know you can come up with that on your own.
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I mean, this is what we would call an imposition on the text.
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It's imposing into the text something that is not there.
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Number two, even though I mentioned that it does have some theological pedigree, it has no historic pedigree.
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A.W.
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Pink lived in the 20th century.
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The Schofield Notes was written in the 19th century.
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These things are not more than 200 years old.
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Nobody in the Reformation period held to the gap theory.
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You cannot go back to the time of the Middle Ages or to the early church and find this.
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The closest thing is in the Hebrew Masoretic text.
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There is a little mark between Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2.
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It's a little mark in the Hebrew, and it basically just puts a pause there.
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That's an argument that they use.
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They say this is the proof right here because the Masoretic text has this mark there.
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It's a mark of pause.
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It's not a proof of a time gap.
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It's all they got up until about 150 or 200 years ago.
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The third weakness, it does not solve the age of the earth problem.
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It doesn't.
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Because geologists who argue that the age of the earth is billions of years based on the geology of the strata of the earth say that the strata of the earth has been laid down successively over long periods of time, and each layer represents a different time period.
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If what they believe happened between Genesis 1, 1 and Genesis 1, 2 was an absolute destruction by flood and by rearranging of the earth itself, which they call the ruin of the earth, then it wouldn't be as it is today.
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It doesn't fit even the scientific side.
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So even though it might give some of the time for it to happen, it doesn't happen in the way that the argument of the long earth scientists would say it would be.
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It just doesn't fit.
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I'll quote another writer on this.
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He said, If the world was reduced to shapeless chaotic mess, as gap theorists propose, how could a reasonably ordered assemblage of fossils and sediments remain as evidence? Surely with such chaos the fossil record would have been severely disrupted, if not entirely destroyed.
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So it doesn't fit even the geological record.
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It just doesn't fit anywhere.
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It doesn't fit in the Bible.
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It doesn't fit into science.
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It doesn't fit anywhere.
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And here's the problem.
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The gap theory essentially says there's not one earth, there's two earths.
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There's not one world history.
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There's two world histories.
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There's not even one atom.
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Because Lucifer himself becomes a proto-atom prior to his fall.
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What you have in the gap theory is speculation and ignorance.
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That's all it is.
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It requires...
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You know what hermeneutics are? Hermeneutics is how you translate the Bible, how you study the Bible.
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We call these hermeneutical gymnastics.
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It requires leaps from one thing to the next to the next.
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It's a string of pearls with nothing connecting each string.
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It's just wild-eyed speculation.
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And you say, Pastor, I could have known that if you'd explained it in five minutes.
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Why have you spent your whole time on this today? This is why.
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And this is where I'm going to begin to draw to a close.
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We've talked about the gap theory.
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We've shown its weaknesses.
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We've shown why we would not hold to this theory.
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But let me tell you, this is not the only place where people add fantastic and strange interpretations to the Bible.
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When they're wanting to force something into the Bible that just isn't there.
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Can I tell you today, as a Bible student, you have two things that no other person in history had prior to this generation.
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One, you have more access to the Scripture than anybody in history has ever had.
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You've got every translation readily available on your cell phone that you could go through at any time and look at.
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You have a wealth of information, but you also have a wealth of bad things.
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That's the second thing.
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A wealth of bad teaching that's trying to be force-fed into your mind every time you go to Google and type in a Bible verse.
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There is a mass of bad teaching in the world, and it's being funneled into our homes through the Internet.
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You go home today, you type in gap theory, you find how many people support this theory.
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Not based on Scripture, but because of wild-eyed speculation.
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And then you go down the rabbit trail, and you start looking at other things.
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All of the crazy, speculative things that people have been teaching do nothing for the good of your soul.
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You wonder why pastors and teachers and churches are necessary? This is why.
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To bring you to a place where you have to see that that is nonsense.
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People say, Oh, I can sit at home and learn all about the Bible.
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I've got the Internet.
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I've got this.
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You know what you don't have? You don't have somebody calling you to account when that's all you have.
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You don't have somebody there helping you look and see the garbage that's being force-fed into you.
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Anything can be forced into the Bible.
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Anything can be forced into it if you've got a strong enough voice.
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This is why Jim Jones took 900 people with him with that Kool-Aid.
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Because anything can be forced if you've got a strong enough voice.
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And my point to you today is very simple.
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When you are studying the Scripture, when you are looking at the text of the Bible, when you're going to the Scriptures, understand, it is not a book of riddles.
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And it's not written to be hiding things in the cracks that you just can't see so as to confuse you or to give you some secret knowledge that someone else doesn't have.
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There is no numerology.
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You're not going to add up the books of the Bible, divide them by seven, and come up with a day you're going to die.
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You know what I'm talking about? The craziness that we see in these wild-eyed speculations.
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Here's the point.
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It's very simple.
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Gap theory opens the door for interesting speculation.
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But interesting speculation is the road to bad theology.
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There's enough interesting things in the Bible just with the black print on the white page.
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You don't need to go adding things to what it says.
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Just believe what it says.
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The Bible is so clear on the things that matter.
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You're a sinner? It's very clear about that.
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There's only one Savior to save you from your sin? It's very clear about that.
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His name is Jesus Christ.
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He came to the earth 2,000 years ago.
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He died on a Roman cross.
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He was buried in a borrowed tomb, and He raised three days later and was seen by over 500 people.
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That is so clear, and you don't have to add anything.
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There is no gaps that have to be filled.
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That is the gospel.
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And let me tell you guys, that's the part that matters most.
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Don't be led astray by wild-eyed speculation.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the opportunity to study today.
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I pray that we've been fair as much as we can, and I pray that this would be a time where You are glorified in our study.
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Lord, we probably spent longer than was needed on a false teaching, Lord, but we need to know these things, and I'm so thankful that You give us this time every week to come together and study, and You bring people to Your church who want to study.
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May it be, Lord, in the weeks to come that we're moved ever closer to a right understanding of history, to a right understanding of science, and to a right understanding of how these things apply to the gospel truth.
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And, Lord, in all this, may You be glorified.
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And, Lord, may You use this time to draw people to Yourself.
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In Jesus' name, amen.