{"id":18274,"date":"2019-09-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/angelology-011-satanology-07\/"},"modified":"2019-09-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T05:00:00","slug":"angelology-011-satanology-07","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/angelology-011-satanology-07\/","title":{"rendered":"Angelology 011 (Satanology 07)"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[12],"series_event":[499],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18274","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-genesis","series_event-angelology","sermon_service_type-sunday-school","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Angelology 011 (Satanology 07)","sermon_date":"20190915","sermon_month":"9","sermon_year":"2019","sermon_notes":7055,"sermon_slides":7056,"sermon_mp3":7061,"sermon_id":"915191231446004","series_or_event":499,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":12,"chapter_and_verse":"1:1-3","sermon_transcript":"Dr. Andy Woods\n\nAngelology 11\u00a0 (Satanology 7)\n\nGenesis 1:1-3\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a09-8-2019\n\nFather, we\u2019re grateful for today, grateful for this morning, grateful for the grace You\u2019ve given us in our lives, first of all to be saved. Secondly, You\u2019ve given us Your Word, and thirdly, You\u2019ve given us the Holy Spirit by which we can understand Your Word. And fourthly, You\u2019ve given us Your people so we can be in fellowship with them as well as You and so we just acknowledge the blessings that we have in You that we\u2019ve been given, we\u2019re told every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Ephesians 1:3.\u00a0 So we praise you for that.\u00a0 I just pray, Father, that today would be just a tremendous day here at Sugar Land Bible Church, I pray Your Spirit would have His way as we fellowship as the Word of God has taught, and I pray that things that need to be\u00a0 uprooted would be that way in our lives, but at the same time I pray You\u2019ll continue to strengthen us and encourage us as we continue to look at Angelology in Sunday School class and move into the Book of Revelation, chapter 177 and 18 in the main service that follows. We\u2019ll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026. Amen!\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 As folks are filing I think Ron might have a handout there for you.\u00a0 And let\u2019s take our Bibles, if we could, and open them to Genesis chapter 1, and verse 1, continuing to move through the subject of angelology, spending some time on Satanology, Satanology being a subcategory of angelology and part of that study involves his original state and first sin which we\u2019ve looked at, Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14.\n\nThen you get into this kind of difficult somewhat controversial question, when did Satan fall?\u00a0 And we\u2019re trying to examine that second option there, that Satan, we\u2019re told, allegedly fell in between the end of verse 1 and the beginning of verse 2 of Genesis chapter 1.\u00a0 And so that sort of question is difficult to answer unless you first examine what is called the Gap Theory.\u00a0 So, what we\u2019ve been doing for the last couple of Sundays is we\u2019ve been taking a look at this subject of the Gap Theory.\n\nFirst of all we\u2019ve looked at the definition of the Gap Theory; you might recall what the Gap Theory is\u2026 and before we even get to the Gap Theory let\u2019s go ahead and read Genesis 1:1-3.\u00a0 \u00a0It says: \u201cIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. \u00a0\u00a0[2] The earth was formless and void, and dark\u00adness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. [3] Then God said, \u201cLet there be light\u201d; and there was light.\u201d\n\nSo according to the Gap Theory, as we\u2019ve tried to explain, you have a creation before creation there in verse 1, depending on who you listen to it\u2019s a fully formed creation with animals and sun.\u00a0 Like the late Merrill Unger of Dallas Seminary argued that there was actually a pre-Adamic race on the earth at that time.\u00a0 And so what happened in between verse 1 and verse 2 is you can put in there billions of years if you want and you can take a fossil record that looks old and jam it in between those two verses because that\u2019s when allegedly that original creation was destroyed through Satan\u2019s fall and God\u2019s judgment of Satan after he fell.\u00a0 And verse 2 therefore is a description of the chaotic condition of the earth following Lucifer\u2019s rebellion and Lucifer\u2019s judgment.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it mentions water there.\u00a0 So there was a flood before the flood (in essence) according to this theory.\u00a0 And from there you get into verses 3-31 and it\u2019s basically this idea that about six thousand years ago in six literal days God was not creating something out of nothing, God was renovating what got broken.\u00a0 So that\u2019s classical Gap Theory.\u00a0 And what we\u2019ve been doing is we\u2019ve been trying to examine this and take a look at it and see if this is actually biblically true.\u00a0 We\u2019ve tried to be very fair to it, like you would anything you would try to critique, you would try to represent it correctly, and so consequently we looked at about thirteen arguments favoring the Gap Theory.\u00a0 And then from there we got through most of this last week, we started to look at okay, that\u2019s what they\u2019re saying, now let\u2019s respond to the evidence.\u00a0 So we responded, if I remember right, to about ten of thirteen arguments used by Gap Theory advocates.\n\nAnd what I\u2019d like to do right now is finish numbers 11, 12 and 13 and then from there move into some reasons why I think the Gap Theory\u2026 just because I didn\u2019t have a better title to call it, Why the Gap Theory Doesn\u2019t Hold Water.<\/em>\u00a0 How\u2019s that for a title.\u00a0\u00a0 But the 11th<\/sup> argument, and I would encourage you if this is your first time in here listening to this to take a look at the archives; we\u2019ve got two studies on this already, and so it\u2019s hard to sort of pick it up on number 3 if this is your first time in here.\u00a0 So that\u2019s why we archive all of our stuff on the SLBC website.\n\nBut one of the arguments, number 11 here concerning the Gap Theory is there just isn\u2019t enough time for Lucifer\u2019s rebellion, post Genesis 1.\u00a0 And I\u2019m of the view and I\u2019ll try to share that with you a little bit later, probably not today, but I think Lucifer did not fall after Genesis chapter 1 but before Genesis 2.\u00a0 I think you have to put the fall of Satan after Genesis 1:31 but obviously before Genesis chapter 3.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll try to explain that a little bit later; it\u2019s kind of a minority view but it is held by a lot of people, like Renald Showers of Friends of Israel.\n\nAnd one of the arguments against my position is there\u2019s just not enough time, you can\u2019t put Lucifer\u2019s fall after Genesis 1 but before Genesis 3 primarily because Adam and Eve were told don\u2019t have kids yet.\u00a0 And that\u2019s true, their first child didn\u2019t show up until Cain there in Genesis 4:1. [Genesis 4:1, \u201cNow the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, \u201cI have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.\u201d]\n\nSo, the idea is, you can\u2019t fit everything in between those chapters, it would take too much time.\u00a0 So we\u2019ve been sort of, I think largely because of the older evolutionary assumptions we\u2019ve been loaded with this presupposition that everything has to take a lot of time.\u00a0 And because there wouldn\u2019t be enough time people are very comfortable, the Scofield Reference Bible does this, putting the fall of Lucifer after Genesis 1:1 but before Genesis 1:2.\n\nSo my response to that, I\u2019ve got it there on the right hand side of the screen, is twenty-four hours; after Genesis 1:31 but before Genesis 3 there\u2019s still enough time for Satan\u2019s fall and judgment because God\u2019s judgments are instantaneous.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a lot of time for God to judge; it\u2019s an instantaneous cataclysmic thing. It\u2019s not like Satan had to go through a long trial process and depose the witnesses and all this stuff.\u00a0 We\u2019re dealing with God here and He can do an instantaneous judgment.\n\nBeyond that angels perhaps live in a different time dimension than we do so what\u2019s normal for angel time may not be necessarily normal for people time.\u00a0 So, people make a lot of assumptions that what\u2019s normative for us in terms of time is normative for the angelic realm.\u00a0 And maybe that\u2019s true and maybe it\u2019s not true but it\u2019s an assumption.\n\nThe twelfth argument given in favor of the Gap Theory, and this is one of the reasons people are drawn to it, is it basically allows you to explain the fossils from an old earth point of view.\u00a0 So if you come through a schooling system like I did for example, that taught you that the fossil record is a result of billions and billions of years, and then suddenly you get saved and you start reading the Book of Genesis, you\u2019re not going to give up your assumptions that you\u2019ve been taught K through 12 or K through college, or K through graduate school just because you\u2019re a Christian.\u00a0 And this is why the Bible places such a high premium on the renewal of the mind.\n\nJust because people are saved doesn\u2019t mean that they don\u2019t bring with them a bunch of prior presuppositions, prior assumptions, into their newfound Christian life.\u00a0 And yes, we have the mind of Christ but it really takes a while, through the process of sanctification for one\u2019s mind to be transformed.\u00a0 You have to be in a time period in your post conversion life where you\u2019re into the Word of God, you\u2019re studying the Word of God, and more important than even that you\u2019re allowing the Word of God to change you, rather than coming to the Word of God trying to change it because you\u2019re holding onto these old assumptions.\n\nSo, if you\u2019re a new Christian, and you\u2019ve been taught an old earth mindset you\u2019re going to try to find some way to reconcile the two.\u00a0 I never really fell into the Gap Theory but I did as a very early Christian fall into theistic evolution which is the idea that evolution is true, we\u2019re just going to blame the whole thing on God.\u00a0 Right!\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s called theistic evolution, God caused evolution to happen, God guided the evolutionary process.\u00a0 And I remember as a very early Christian, I really liked that because I could be a Christian and believe in Genesis and I didn\u2019t have to abandon everything that I had been taught concerning the old age of the fossil record from K-12.\n\nThe problem is the more you start to look at it the more it\u2019s like you\u2019re trying to mix water and oil.\u00a0 And as you get more and more intellectually honest you have to say well these two philosophies or theologies, because that\u2019s what both of them are, it\u2019s just that evolution sort of masquerades as science but when you really look at it it\u2019s actually a manmade philosophy that requires faith assumptions, just like you have to have faith assumptions to believe the Bible.\u00a0 The more you start to look at the two you start to see the two don\u2019t go together; they separate like oil separates from water.\u00a0 And so a lot of people are sort of drawn to the Gap Theory because gosh, I get to explain the fossil record as old because I can just cut the fossil record into the end of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 1 of Genesis 1 and I can still believe in literal creation, I\u2019ll just call it renovation and I can believe there are real creation days and I can believe in twenty-four hour creation days, and I can believe God started the renovation process thousands of\u00a0 years ago rather than billions of years ago.\n\nSo, it\u2019s a great way to bridge the divide.\u00a0 One of the problems with that way of thinking is what they\u2019re saying is there\u2019s no genetic relationship between the fossil record and current animals.\u00a0 Now why do they say that?\u00a0 Because that was the old earth that perished through Lucifer\u2019s flood and God began to renovate and so what you have beginning in Genesis 1:3 is a brand-new sort of renovation project which would kind of sever the genetic relationship, wouldn\u2019t it?\u00a0 It would sever the link between current animals and animals that we see in the fossil record.\u00a0 The problem with that is fossilized plants and animals, and I\u2019m not speaking here as some kind of authority on science, I don\u2019t have any real training in science, I\u2019m just sort of explaining things the best I can from a biblical perspective.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of people that are far more equipped to get into the scientific issues than I am.\n\nBut just at a very basic level fossilized plants and animals look a lot like their counterparts in the present world.\u00a0 This example I like to use a lot because that\u2019s basically what the Gap Theory is saying.\u00a0 It\u2019s basically saying that the Garden of Eden that you read about in Genesis 2 was built on the wreckage and remains of an old earth that perished through Lucifer\u2019s rebellion.\u00a0 And satanology therefore, there is no genetic relationship between fossils in the fossil records and fossils or animals that we see in our present world.\u00a0 And a lot of people will say well, there is a genetic relationship between the two because the two look very similar.\n\nOne of the things that I started to come to believe through the book The Genesis Flood<\/em>, and I\u2019ll make a reference to that a little bit later, it\u2019s a seminal book written by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb, and we\u2019ll get into that later.\u00a0 But one of the things they explain is a lot of the things that you see in the fossil record cannot be explained other than through a worldwide deluge.\u00a0 So you have animals that (to me) don\u2019t really look like they\u2019ve gone through a process of billions of years.\u00a0 \u00a0I mean, you\u2019ve got the neck sort of bowed out, you\u2019ve got situations where animals are fossilized as one animal is consuming another animal, one animal is digesting something and they\u2019re fossilized.\n\nAnd so a lot of things in the fossil record I would say you don\u2019t even need billions of years to explain them.\u00a0 You can explain them through what we would call a worldwide deluge and since that\u2019s true I no longer have a need, really, to explain the fossil record in terms of billions and billions and billions and billions of years.\u00a0 A lot of things in the fossil record can be explained through the Noahic flood and if that\u2019s true I really don\u2019t have the need of a Gap Theory to explain some kind of fossil record that allegedly accumulated over billions of years.\n\nA thirteenth argument used by Gap Theory advocates is they point to the gaps that typically occur\u00a0\u00a0 in Bible prophecy.\u00a0 I was getting into kind of a discussion with a guy who I really trust and like concerning the Gap Theory, he\u2019s a bel in the Gap Theory, I\u2019m not a believer in the Gap Theory, and he began to explain or say to me well, you believe in gaps elsewhere, don\u2019t you?\u00a0 I mean, you believe in prophecy there are gaps.\u00a0 And I would have to say yes, we believe in what we would call, using this analogy, the mountain peaks or prophecy where you\u2019ve got one mountain off in the distance and the one that\u2019s nearer to you is slightly lower than the further mountain in the distance which is a bit higher.\u00a0 And the only thing you can really see are those two mountain peaks from a distance.\u00a0 You cannot see the valley between those mountain peaks.\n\nAnd so in our studies of Daniel and our studies of the Book of Revelation, I tried to communicate that that happens in prophecy all the time.\u00a0 Isaiah 9:6 says, \u201cFor a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;\u201d now that\u2019s clearly the first coming, right?\u00a0 \u201cAnd the government will rest on His shoulders;\u201d now that\u2019s the second coming, so Isaiah just skipped there at least 2,000 years between the first coming and the second coming and he didn\u2019t tell us a lot about what\u2019s happening in between.\n\nAnd people say well if you can believe in that then why can\u2019t you see a gap at the end of verse 1 and the beginning of verse 2 of Genesis 1?\u00a0 I mean, if prophetic gaps are very common then obviously we should be open to the idea there\u2019s a gap here in Genesis 1:1-3. \u00a0[Genesis 1:1-3, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. \u00a0[2] The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. \u00a0[3] Then God said, \u201cLet there be light\u201d; and there was light.\u201d\n\nAnd the answer to that is when you make that kind of argument you\u2019re confusing the genre\u2019s in the Bible.\u00a0 Genre is a French word, I believe, which means kind or species.\u00a0 And the Bible has different literary genres.\u00a0 For example, when you read the Book of Revelation, as we\u2019re studying on Sunday mornings, it sure doesn\u2019t read like the Book of Romans, does it.\u00a0 I mean, there\u2019s all these symbols and all of these kinds of things and that\u2019s because God decided to record Romans in one genre, an epistolary genre, and He decided to record the Book of Revelation in another genre, the prophetic genre.\n\nAnd when people try to argue that gosh, there\u2019s gaps in prophecy therefore there has to be gaps there in early Genesis they\u2019re not really understanding that those are two totally different genres.\u00a0 Genesis 1:1-2 is what you call historical genre.\u00a0 [Genesis 1:1-2, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.\u201d]\n\nIsaiah 9:6-7 is what you call eschatological genre.\u00a0 [Isaiah 9:6-7, \u201cFor a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.\u00a0 [7] There<\/sup> will be no end to the increase of His<\/em> government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.\u00a0 The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.\u201d]\n\nGenesis 1:1-2 is what you call narrative, straightforward story telling.\u00a0 Isaiah 9:6-7 is what you call prophetic.\u00a0 Genesis 1:1-2 is looking backwards; Isaiah 9:6-7 is looking forwards.\u00a0 So when people make that argument, to me they\u2019re not understanding the different\u2026 they\u2019re not really what I would call genre sensitive (can I use that word) understanding that God communicates different things depending on what genre you\u2019re dealing with.\u00a0 So that\u2019s sort of my response there.\n\nNumber 13, and let\u2019s move in here to number four, having tried the best I could the response to the evidence of the Gap Theory, what are some remaining problems with the Gap Theory.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at some of those, not to depress you too much, but I have eleven things and I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get to all of them today.\u00a0 But one of the problems with the Gap Theory, one of the remaining problems with the Gap Theory is you only have one verse for this alleged original creation.\u00a0 Original creation supposedly happened in verse 1 and that\u2019s where most of the time of human history is located.\u00a0 And so it\u2019s sort of odd that if you want to study the creation before creation, the creation that was marred (allegedly) through the Luciferian rebellion and judgment, you only have one verse of the Bible dealing with that.\u00a0 And so that seems a little odd; it makes the whole thing sort of suspicious to me.\n\nA second problem is there really is not a lot of information.\u00a0 I mean, if I was stuck on a desert island and all I had was Genesis 1 and I was reading Genesis chapter 1, verses 1-3, I mean, it would be very difficult for me to conclude that in between those two verses is A. a preexisting pre-Adamic creation.\u00a0 B.\u00a0 That Lucifer fell and marred it.\u00a0 C. Lucifer was judged.\u00a0 D. God began to redo everything beginning in verse 3.\u00a0 It\u2019s just you\u2019re taking a ton of ideas from outside the text and you\u2019re reading it into a text and you\u2019re jamming all of this stuff in there.\u00a0 And to be frank with you I don\u2019t really think it\u2019s supported by a plain reading of the text.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I would ever be\u2026 I don\u2019t think I could ever come up with that conclusion on my own, on my desert island, unless I had a gap theorist swimming the shore to explain all these things to me.\n\nSo, we believe in something called the perspicuity of the Bible, the basic message of the Bible is clear.\u00a0 God did not write His Word in such a way that only the elite of the elite could understand it.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need some kind of specialized talent or specialized insight to understand the basic message of the Bible.\u00a0 There are, of course, some parts of the Bible, as Peter tells us, that are more difficult than others but the basic message of the Bible is clear and this is what we call the concept of perspicuity which means clarity.\n\nAnd by my way of thinking the Gap Theory, because it wants me to read all of these things into supposedly what happened after verse 1 but before verse 2, is sort of a denial of perspicuity.\u00a0 It\u2019s, to my mind a product of not exegesis<\/em> but eisegesis<\/em> and you really need to understand those two terms because exegesis<\/em> is drawing from the text what is there, not drawing from a whole bunch of information that\u2019s not in the text and read into the text.\u00a0 That would be the opposite, that would be eisegesis<\/em>.\u00a0 Exegesis <\/em>comes from the Greek preposition ek<\/em>, which means out of, you\u2019re drawing out of the text what is there.\u00a0 Eisegesis<\/em> is what you don\u2019t want to do, is to read into the text what is not there.\n\nIf you want a modern day example battle between exegesis<\/em> and eisegesis <\/em>you don\u2019t have to look \u00a0any further than the United States Supreme Court because that\u2019s the whole battle because there are\u00a0 a lot of people out there that really don\u2019t like the\u00a0 United States Constitution because it\u2019s limited government framework doesn\u2019t fit their ideas of where they want the United States to go in terms of big government or socialism or Marxism.\u00a0 And so they\u2019ve come up with this idea that they can read into the Constitution whatever they want, a right to have an abortion, whatever you want to have, banning the Bible and prayer out of the public schools, whatever the issue is they come up with these decisions.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got the ninth circuit a few years back that outlawed the pledge of allegiance in the classroom based on the Constitution.\n\nAnd you know, you say to yourself well, gosh, these guys really get an A+ for creativity because I\u2019m reading my Constitution\u2026 and by the way, if you were to read your Constitution today when\u00a0 you get home, including the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the Constitution, it would take you only eleven pages to get through it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty simple document.\u00a0 But what people do is they say well, you know, it\u2019s a living document and we can read into it whatever we want to read into it because times change and society changes and it\u2019s the function of a judge to read a bunch of stuff into the document that\u2019s not there.\n\nWell, what\u2019s going on is a battle of authority, who\u2019s the authority here?\u00a0 The mind of the judge (eisegesis<\/em>) or the original vision of America\u2019s Founders, (exegesis)<\/em>.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t want a bunch of people on the bench that have an A+ IQ and excel in creativity.\u00a0 What I want is people on the bench that know how to do exegesis<\/em> and how to derive original meaning out of something and then apply it to the matter that they adjudicating for them.\u00a0 That\u2019s basically the difference between exegesis<\/em> and eisegesis<\/em>.\u00a0 Exegesis<\/em> is something we all want to do in Christianity because this is God\u2019s book, right?\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be in a position where I\u2019m editing God.\u00a0 But we have to guard ourselves constantly against eisegesis<\/em> and that\u2019s why learning how to do basic hermeneutics, understanding the literal grammatical historical contextual method of interpretation becomes so important because what we want is for God to speak at the end of the day.\u00a0 So I\u2019m sort of the view that this Gap Theory is more of a product of eisegesis<\/em>, getting something to fit or work than exegesis<\/em>.\n\nAnd number three, concerning the Gap Theory it\u2019s also important to point out that you have absolutely no supporting verses anywhere describing an angelic rebellion and judgment in a gap of time, in between original creation and renovated creation.\u00a0 So I can give you a whole bunch of verses concerning the fall of Satan, many of them we\u2019ve looked at, some of them we will look at.\u00a0 Revelation 12:3-8; Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4, Isaiah 14:12-15, Ezekiel 28:12-17 and none of them, none of these outside passages does it ever say that the Luciferian fall transpired in this alleged gap.\n\nAnd number four, even if you disagree with everything I\u2019m saying I think number four here may be the most important point because we are not the first generation that has wrestled with this problem of literal Genesis verses what so-called science is saying about the age of the earth; we think we\u2019re the first people in Christian history that have wrestled with this tension.\u00a0 And I\u2019d like to show that we are not the first people that have wrestled with this; this has been a wrestling match that\u2019s gone on ever since post Darwin and the church has been trying to figure out how to deal with this issue and Christianity has generated two ways of handling this, and you need to know what two ways are.\n\nThe first way is what is called the accommodation model.\u00a0 The accommodation model, I kind of like to call it the backward Christian soldier approach.\u00a0 The accommodation model is the idea that oh my goodness, science has proven something that the age of the earth is billions of years old or whatever so therefore I need to make the Bible fit what science is saying.\u00a0 You accommodate the Bible to what you think is scientific fact.\u00a0 That\u2019s called the accommodation model.\n\nSo a lot of the things that people do with early Genesis come out of that model, the Day-Age model, that each of the creation days is an age of time, millions of years each, billions of years each and not a twenty-four hour day.\u00a0 That comes out of the accommodation approach.\u00a0 W. H. Greene, I\u2019ve got his name there,1892, was really one of the first to develop this. I believe, if I remember right out of Princeton and he became panicked as the Bible believer that the scientific post Darwin was saying something different that you read in early Genesis and there\u2019s actually biographies written by his son about how he watched his father in the upper chambers of the house, the balcony, pacing back and forth trying to figure this out.\n\nSo we\u2019re not the first people that have tried to deal with this.\u00a0 And nobody wants to look down at the end of the day, no one wants to become what\u2019s called unscientific so his solution was you know what?\u00a0 We\u2019ve got gaps in the genealogies if Matthew 1.\u00a0 And guess what?\u00a0\u00a0 There are gaps in the genealogies in Matthew 1. So, if there are gaps in the genealogy of Matthew 1 there\u2019s got to be some gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11.\u00a0 And there could be multiple missing generations.\u00a0 So we no longer have to believe in thousands of years old but kind of stretch this back a little big.\u00a0 And the basic problem with that is today they\u2019re saying that everything is billions of years old.\u00a0 Now you\u2019re not going to find, I don\u2019t think, billions of years in a missing genealogy in any gap of the Bible.\u00a0 So now they\u2019re telling us everything is so old that the genealogy stretching idea really doesn\u2019t work anymore.\n\nI do believe that there\u2019s a good case to be made that the genecology\u2019s of Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 are not open but they\u2019re closed.\u00a0 One of the reasons is Jude 14, which talks about Enoch, seventh from Adam, [Jude 14:15, \u201cIt was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying\u2026 so just do the count and you\u2019ll see that Jude had it exactly right, seven generations you\u2019ve got no missing genealogies or genealogical generations there.\n\nBut I\u2019m not trying to get into that, I\u2019m just trying to show you where the accommodation strategy came from.\u00a0\u00a0 And this is the only strategy that Christianity has in dealing with this issue, post-Darwin; the Christian church really knew nothing else.\u00a0 It\u2019s an old strategy.\u00a0 And it\u2019s sort of interesting today within evangelicalism when people advocate it they make it sound like it\u2019s some\u00adthing new, it\u2019s something exciting, it\u2019s something academic, it\u2019s something scholarly. But the reality is it\u2019s a recycling of what W. H. Greene was trying to do back in 1892.\n\nThe basic problem with the accommodation strategy is, first of all, number one, you\u2019re attaching the Bible to a moving target, meaning the scientific world keeps adjusting things and this generation says what?\u00a0 Four or five billion years old, the generation before that didn\u2019t make it quite that old, and the generation that\u2019s going to come along after we\u2019re all dead and gone is going to say something completely different in terms of science.\u00a0 Is that how we want to handle God\u2019s Word?\u00a0 You keep rewriting it and adjusting it based on what the so-called scientific intelligentsia is saying?\n\nAnother problem with it is you\u2019re really not doing exegesis<\/em>. You\u2019re doing eisegesis<\/em> because you\u2019ve got one eyeball on the biblical text and you\u2019ve got another eyeball on what the scientific world is saying. And what you\u2019re basically doing is you\u2019re reading what the scientific world is saying back into the Bible.\u00a0 Now if you really want to get up to speed on this the guy that we have on our Board, he\u2019s our Board Chairman in faculty at Chafer Seminary is Charlie Clough and you can get his Bible Framework series online.\u00a0 Charlie Clough is no village idiot, I can tell you that much.\u00a0 He graduated from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and he went through Dallas Seminary (I think in the late 60\u2019s, early 70\u2019s), and he got very interested in these issues, and he won the Hebrew award. So if you want to listen to someone that really has the scientific acumen to talk about some of these issues, I recommend his Bible Framework series. I think you can find it at Bible Framework.com.\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019ll go into this.\n\nBut really what you\u2019re doing again is you\u2019re really not doing exegesis<\/em>, you\u2019re doing eisegesis<\/em>.\u00a0 And I have a problem with that because I don\u2019t think the scientific world has the foggiest idea how old things are.\u00a0 It relates to God\u2019s questioning of Job in Job 38:4 where God showed up and gave Job a pop quiz to reveal how little he knew about his situation and life in general. \u00a0[Job 38:4, \u201cWhere were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?\u00a0 Tell Me<\/em>, if you have understanding\u201d] And that whole pop quiz starts in Job 38 and it is very, very interesting to me that the very first question that God asked Job is \u201cWhere were you when I laid the foundation of the earth.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I mean, you think you\u2019re so smart and you think you\u2019ve philosophically got everything figured out.\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s do a little quiz here; I mean, you tell Me how the heavens and the earth came into existence.\u00a0 The answer is Job doesn\u2019t know the first thing about that for the simple reason that he wasn\u2019t an eyewitness.\u00a0 Carl Sagan doesn\u2019t know anything about it either.\n\nSo, if you want an eye witness how do you figure out what happened?\u00a0 It\u2019s like coming into a crime scene, no one was there to see the crime but you see a knife, you see a gun, you see blood; it\u2019s the job of the forensic experts to reconstruct what happened based on the observable evidence because the expert was not there to see the crime.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the most powerful testimony you can introduce at a court of law is eyewitness testimony.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what you don\u2019t have with anybody in Genesis; the only person that was there was God and that\u2019s the point of the inquiry here.\n\nAnd then you go over to Hebrews 11:3 and everybody knows what Hebrews 11 is about, right.\u00a0 Hebrews 11 is about faith.\u00a0 And you ask Christians to tell me about Hebrews 11 and they\u2019ll tell you all kinds of things about Hebrews 11, it\u2019s a record of people that trusted God throughout the ages but what most people have never really stop to think about is have you ever examined the very first entry in the hall of faith?\u00a0 I mean, before he gets to Abel and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and the Judges era, and all the things he mentions he gives this entry, \u201cBy faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.\u00a0 The very first way you ever exercise faith in God is you trust what He has revealed concerning early Genesis.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the only thing you have with this because God is the only eyewitness.\n\nI like the King James translation of 1 Timothy 6:20, it says this, \u201cO Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so-called.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s what you have today with secular so-called science trying to pontificate when creation happened.\u00a0 It is science falsely called.\u00a0 Why is it that?\u00a0 Because even I remember, and I was not the greatest science student but even I remember the steps of the scientific method and I remember my teacher very clearly communicating that science, for it to be called science, has to be observable testable and repeatable.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t observe it, if you can\u2019t test it, if you can\u2019t repeat it you can\u2019t call it a scientific fact.\n\nSo we have a scientific fact called the law of gravity, objects fall as\u2026 whatever the rate is, I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 So is that a scientific fact.\u00a0 Of course, it is because we can sit here and test it, Ready, [sounds like he drops something]. Oh, looks like it\u2019s working fine.\u00a0 Let\u2019s try it again; let\u2019s repeat it.\u00a0 Oh, it looks like it\u2019s working fine.\u00a0 That\u2019s science.\u00a0 When someone is trying to tell me about something that happened billions of years ago that they were not around to see and they want the title \u201cscientist\u201d it doesn\u2019t matter how many degrees they have after their name, it doesn\u2019t matter if they have the right lab coat on.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t science!\u00a0 They have just moved away from science into the realm of philosophy and their philosophy is governed by something called uniformitarianism.\n\nUniformitarianism is the idea that things are uniform, in other words, they\u2019ve always\u2026 the patterns that we see today have always been and they will always be.\u00a0 And so they develop these views about the age of the earth by how long does it take for the rocks in the Grand Canyon to form?\u00a0 Well, the rock formation has always been a slow gradual process.\u00a0 So, if it took this long for these strata to form, we can sort of extrapolate backwards to thing we can\u2019t see and we can pretend that the pattern that we see in front of us has always been.\u00a0 That\u2019s what you call uniformitarianism.\u00a0 In other words, they\u2019re trusting what they can see around them as a normal pattern and pretend like it\u2019s always been.\u00a0 That is, I think, what is being condemned here, science falsely so-called.\u00a0 If you want a great chapter of the Bible that deals with this whole philosophy that would emerge in the last days called Uniformitarianism I\u2019d recommend 2 Peter chapter 3, a prophecy about the whole thing.\u00a0 And it\u2019s an eerie description of philosophy that was masqueraded science beginning in the 20th<\/sup> century and into the 21st<\/sup> century.\n\nSo you can\u2019t pretend that something that\u2019s normal has always been because how do you know the pattern never changed?\u00a0 You\u2019re assuming the pattern never changed but you don\u2019t know that because you were never there as an eyewitness.\u00a0\u00a0 And if you want to walk by faith you read the Bible and you see God changed the pattern multiple times.\u00a0 The world that we\u2019re living in has gone through major catastrophes already, the fall, the flood, the dispersion of\u2026 you know at one time the human race spoke one language that got disrupted.\u00a0 I would never reap those conclusions through uniformitarianism but I reap those conclusions through faith because God tells me that He was there and explains to me what would happen.\u00a0 So you have a choice in this who you\u2019re going to believe---uniformitarian presuppositions or the Word of God. \u00a0That\u2019s the whole conflict.\n\nAnd so one of the problems with old accommodation strategy is it\u2019s sort of a cave in to the scientific world, so-called scientific world.\u00a0 And they\u2019re always trying to rewrite the Bible and adjust the Bible to make it keep up with modern day science.\u00a0 Now the day\/age theory comes out of that strategy.\u00a0 The genealogy stretching comes out of that strategy. The Gap Theory comes out of that strategy because when you actually examine the historical record, yeah, you might be able to find a few eccentrics in church history that believed the Gap Theory but the Gap Theory really does not become popular until the post-Darwin world.\u00a0 And so the church is finally saying oh, we\u2019re so relieved, we\u2019ve finally come up with something that can explain the age of the earth scientifically and we can believe the Bible as well.\n\nBernard Ramm in his critique of the Gap Theory points this out.\u00a0 He says:\u00a0 \u201cAlthough it has been claimed that the Fathers believed it and some of the post \u2013 reformation exegetes taught it, its great popularity dates from the work of Chalmers (1780\u20121847).\u2026If it was Chalmers who first vigorously advocated it in modern times, it was the work of G. H. Pember from a book called\u00a0 Earth\u2019s Earliest Ages<\/em>, first edition, 1876;\u201d now when did Charles Darwin write The Origin of the Species<\/em>?\u00a0 About twenty years earlier, a little less than twenty years earlier, 1859.\u00a0 Pember\u2019s work \u201c\u2026 (frequently republished)\u201d which took the Gap Theory and basically popularized it and canonized it.\u00a0 And Ramm says \u201cPember\u2019s work became one of the core books which has shaped modern Fundamentalism.\u201d\u00a0 [Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 196.]\n\nSo from Pember it goes right into the Scofield Reference Bible and I don\u2019t know if you understand this or not but the Scofield Reference Bible was something that was huge in terms of shaping modern day fundamentalism.\u00a0 In the 1920\u2019s there is that conflict going on between what\u2019s called the modernist and the fundamentalist.\u00a0 The denominational seminaries, sometimes called the seven sisters, who were sending their best and brightest over to Europe to sit under unbelievers to be trained to somehow be qualified to come back from enlightened Europe to teach believers began to fill up the seminaries of the seven sisters.\n\nAnd from the seminaries came the pastors and the preachers and the preachers would get up and they would start to articulate some ideas that the laity said well, that kind of smells funny!\u00a0 And that\u2019s where I think God significantly used the Scofield Reference Bible because they had that Scofield Reference Bible and they could read its notes.\u00a0 And they would say well wait a minute, our preacher is saying X and the Scofield reference Bible in its notes is saying Y.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m not one of those that badmouths the Scofield reference Bible.\n\nThe independent Bible church movement\u2026 I mean, think about this, why is it that in Houston I drive around and I see all of these denominational churches with beautiful stained glass windows, fully endowed, all paid for, and I see the fundamentalist like ourselves meeting in storefronts, and I think we actually, compared to most fundamentalists, have a pretty nice facility here but I have to say I am looking forward to getting the new chairs in at some point.\u00a0 I mean, why is it that the denominations control these beautiful buildings and the Bible believers are always meeting somewhere else in other buildings.\u00a0 Well, there\u2019s a historical reason for that; it\u2019s called the fundamentalist modernist controversy.\u00a0 And you can read all about it, it goes back to the 1920\u2019s.\u00a0 And so people started to smell something wasn\u2019t right, they had the Scofield Reference Bible and they started to exit the mainline denominations and they began to form independent Bible churches. So Sugarland Bible Church would be part of that independent Bible teaching tradition.\n\nAnd so the Scofield Reference Bible is a good Bible but the problem is the Scofield Reference Bible was written during a time period when the only option that the church understood or even knew of concerning how to deal with the tension between alleged science and early Genesis, the only strategy the church knew was accommodation.\u00a0 And so that\u2019s why it\u2019s in the Scofield Reference Bible.\u00a0 And so it\u2019s sort of funny today, people are trying to argue for the Gap Theory and one of their arguments is look at all these famous people that believed it, it must be right.\u00a0 Scofield believed it. Clarence Larkin believed it.\n\nPeople say well, you\u2019re the President of Chafer Theological Seminary, and they\u2019ll send me sharp e-mails about how Lewis Sperry Chafer believed it.\u00a0 So it\u2019s true\u2026 well, all of those guys I mentioned, Scofield, Chafer, and Larkin are basically functioning in a time period where the only strategy the church had was the accommodation strategy.\u00a0 That\u2019s all the church knew how to do.\u00a0 And so things shifted dramatically in 1961 with a brand new strategy that came out.\u00a0 That brand-new strategy, for lack of a better name I\u2019m going to call it the Biblical presupposition model.\u00a0 And the seminal book that came out and switched evangelical thinking on this was the book The Genesis Flood<\/em> by Henry Morris, credential scientist, John Whitcomb, I think John Whitcomb is still alive, Henry Morris is with the Lord, credentialed Hebrew scholars.\n\nAnd they looked at what the church had been doing since W. H. Green and how the church kept doing this accommodation strategy and backward Christian soldier and they said you know what, we\u2019re going to try something different.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we go out there and why don\u2019t we examine and scrutinize what the scientific world is saying? Why don\u2019t we hold to the integrity of the Bible and why don\u2019t we hold the secular world and its assumptions hostage to Scripture?\u00a0 Now that is totally different than the Accommodation Strategy developed by W. H. Green.\u00a0 And if you were living in between 1892 and 1961 and you died before 1961 you probably went to your grave with that old strategy because that\u2019s all you knew how to do.\u00a0 And then all of a sudden, this book comes out that switches everything where you have these beautiful and eloquent explanations of why what the scientific world is saying really is science falsely so-called.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t found a missing link, in fact we still call the missing link the missing link.\u00a0 That seems to indicate it\u2019s missing.\n\nAll this stuff they\u2019re saying about carbon 14 dating may not be right; in fact, they took rocks from Mount St. Helens, fossilized at Mount St. Helens instantaneously, took that into the lab asking for a date.\u00a0 How long did it take the fossils to develop?\u00a0 The lab comes back and says billions of years.\u00a0 Well we just grabbed it from something that happened 24 hours ago.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not a scientist but these are the things that Whitcomb and Morris are saying, they\u2019re examining evolution, examining the age of the age of the earth, examining carbon fourteen dating and they\u2019re switching the strategy and they\u2019re basically holding the findings of the secular world hostage to the integrity of the Bible.\n\nAnd that\u2019s what I would call the new strategy, it\u2019s a strategy that I much more am privy to because you\u2019re not attaching the Bible to a moving target anymore.\u00a0 You\u2019re not doing eisegesis anymore but you\u2019re doing exegesis, and in the process, people are starting to discover that we don\u2019t need the Gap Theory anymore.\u00a0 In fact, Theodore Epp in his ministry, who was a Gap Theory advocate came out with his staff and publicly repented that he had ever taught the Gap Theory.\u00a0 So the Gap Theory based on when it becomes popular\u2026 okay, post 1859, in the Scofield Reference Bible up to the eve of 1961, the Gap Theory is very popular.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it\u2019s part of the old accommodation strategy and it\u2019s the only thing Christians knew how to deal with this issue.\n\nWhen you get into the Genesis flood 1961 Whitcomb and Morris you have now a totally different strategy, you have a totally new strategy, you have a totally new way of thinking, and so the need for the Gap Theory, trying to explain all these ages in the fossil record, you don\u2019t need the theory anymore.\u00a0 So when people want to bring that to Gap theory it\u2019s like REALLY??? \u00a0You want to bring back that tired, dead horse from another era?\u00a0 I mean, it\u2019s a relic.\n\nAnd so here\u2019s I guess what I want you to understand; in your life as a Christian you\u2019re going to have people stand up in front of you and they\u2019re going to say different things about the Book of Genesis.\u00a0 And I want you to understand that whoever is talking to you, it doesn\u2019t matter how popular they are, it doesn\u2019t matter how many degrees they have after their name, it doesn\u2019t matter how good they sound, they\u2019re only using one of two strategies.\u00a0 They\u2019re either going back to the accommodation strategy, not understanding that the accommodation strategy is the old strategy but they sound so good in talking about it people think it\u2019s the new strategy.\n\nYou know, Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe<\/em>, has been doing this since 1981. In fact, Anne and I were in a church, actually before we met, that formally launched Hugh Ross.\u00a0 I mean, we knew about Hugh Ross before Hugh Ross was cool.\u00a0 And Hugh Ross if you listen to him what is he talking about? Oh, the flood really didn\u2019t fill the whole earth.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t believe in a global flood.\u00a0 Oh, there was a Prehominid type Adamic race before Adam, Pre-Adamic race.\u00a0 The creation days are not twenty-four-hour days; they\u2019re ages.\u00a0 And your average Christian listens to that and says wow, that sounds so enlightening when in reality the only thing Hugh Ross has done is he\u2019s gone back into the past, and see, this is why I\u2019m covering this part of history so you won\u2019t be deceived by this, he\u2019s going back into the past and he\u2019s retrieving an old strategy that\u2019s no longer needed.\n\nSo anybody who you listen to, anybody who talks to you on this issue, they\u2019re coming from one of two vantage points.\u00a0 They\u2019re going back either to an accommodation strategy or they\u2019re following the biblical presupposition model.\u00a0 Henry Morris, through Henry Morris comes a wonderful ministry called ICR, Institute for Creation Research.\u00a0 That ministry is birthed out of\u2026 and it\u2019s very interesting to study this, people not coming from Christian schools, that ministry was birthed out of people not coming from Christian schools and Bible colleges.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because if the people that birthed that ministry came out of Christian schools and Bible colleges, who have been taught accommodation, because that\u2019s the only thing the church knew how to do prior to 1961, accommo\u00addation would have controlled that ministry.\u00a0 But that ministry came out of people who were basically scientists, credential scientists, who really didn\u2019t feel the way to the scientific evidence was saying everything that the scientific world says.\n\nAnd so the presupposition models start with a great ministry, The Institute for Creation Research.\u00a0 And then you have different spinoffs of that; you have Ken Ham sort of leaving ICR and forming his own ministry.\u00a0 Answers in Genesis, that\u2019s why our youth pastor, Gabe, had been wanting to go visit the ark this summer.\u00a0 I was like let\u2019s do it because that\u2019s coming out of the right strategy.\u00a0 And then you have other ones that are a little smaller. I\u2019m on some of their newsletters; I don\u2019t remember their names. But Jonathan Sarfati, who\u2019s a wonderful scholar and writer, is coming out for a biblical presupposition model.\n\nNow you have Hugh Ross. What is Hugh Ross doing?\u00a0 Hugh Ross sounds really good when he talks. I\u2019ve never seen a guy like Hugh Ross that can go into an evangelical audience and shift their thinking as fast as he can.\u00a0 I mean, the guy sounds good, but he is just recycling the old stuff.\u00a0 And this is part of the problem I\u2019m having with the Gap Theory is the fact that it doesn\u2019t become popular in Christianity until post 1859; it makes me very suspicious of the whole thing.\u00a0 And if it\u2019s so clear why wasn\u2019t it popular in the prior 1800 years?\u00a0 How come I can\u2019t find the Gap theory prominently displayed in Jewish interpreters and early Christian interpreters.\u00a0 Well, there\u2019s an answer to that; it\u2019s related to this accommodation type strategy.\u00a0 And so that\u2019s one of the reasons I\u2019m very suspicious of the Gap Theory because in my mind [can't understand word, sounds like be there] it\u2019s a late 19th<\/sup> century accommodation to explain the fossil records, and it\u2019s not even needed any more.\n\nOne more here\u2026. Well, let\u2019s not do one more, no doubt I\u2019ve thrown enough bombs for you guys to ask some questions; maybe you want to throw some bombs at me.\u00a0 [someone says something, can\u2019t hear] I agree mostly with what you\u2019re saying; the only statement I struggled with is at the beginning you say let\u2019s throw out our scientific knowledge and I don\u2019t think we should ever throw out true science. What we need to understand is that a lot of the things that we\u2019re seeing in the natural world we need to understand how to interpret those things through the right lens.\u00a0 So what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re substituting one interpretation for another but we\u2019re not dishing science, true science, because science at the end of the day is always going to agree with the Bible and the Bible is always going to agree with science.\u00a0 The problem with true science is our presuppositions through which we read interpretations.\u00a0 The example I used about the crime scene, you know, who done it? \u00a0\u00a0Well, it kind of depends on what set of glasses you put on because everybody is looking at the same evidence.\n\nAnyway, let\u2019s close in prayer.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for this time and help us to continue to wrestle with a difficult issue and give this to Your light and Your mind as we continue our study here on the Gap Theory the next time we\u2019re together.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 I ask that you\u2019ll be with us in the main service as we begin to take a look at the subject of Babylon.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name and God\u2019s people said\u2026. Amen!","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t