Book Description

Chapter 3 The First Judgment: The World Prior To Adam There may have been many judgments upon the earth since its beginning millions or billions of years ago; however, the present commentary will deal only with the last tens of thousands of years of earth’s existence. In Genesis 1:2, the verses written by Moses (as author of the Genesis account) portray an earth that was veiled in darkness so that its form could not be discerned. The earth at that time was covered with water (ice) high above the mountain tops so that it gave the appearance of being a dark revolving sphere of frozen water (Table-2). God’s spirit is described as hovering over this revolving ball of water and brooding over the sad condition of this dark, void planet. God did not create a dark and dismal planet at the beginning, because God does not create darkness; in fact, darkness is incompatible with His existence and presence. So what had happened that God viewed (Gen. 1:2) such a decrepit state of the world? Does scripture attempt to explain this phenomenon, or does the inspired word of God remain silent on this issue? It was first proposed as a theory by the Scotsman Thomas Chalmers in the early 19th century that a “gap” in time existed between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. This gap-in-time would encompass a “ruin-reconstruction theme” and the existence of pre-Adamic living beings. Obviously, a huge catastrophic event would have had to occur to produce this decadent state of the world. The “gap concept” was later popularized by mention in the margin notes of the Scofield Reference Bible.