Peter warns that in the “last days” there will be “scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’ ”

He goes on, “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” (II Peter 3)

By this passage, Peter seems to be confirming that there was an “old world” that perished in a flood preceding the Flood of Noah’s day and the six days of creation defined in Genesis 1.

My pastor, Richard Jordan, reasons, “Often the standard teaching of this verse in II Peter is that the ‘old world’ would be the world that perished in the Flood with Noah, but there’s some real problems with that. First of all, Peter makes a distinction between the heavens that ‘were of old’ and perished, and ‘the heavens and the earth, which are now.’

“If the heavens and earth perished, and then you have ‘the heavens and the earth, which are now,’ what did you have to do? You had to re-do them, didn’t you? In the Flood of Noah, what is it that perished? It was the world of ungodly men; the people on the planet. The planet didn’t perish; it was the world order that perished.

“I mean, the same ground Noah walked on, Adam walked on. There’s no indication anywhere in the Book of Genesis that the earth was dissolved and reconstituted in Genesis 7 and 8. Or that the starry heavens out there were either.

“Now, I will say there were things that happened in the heavens, just as they happened on the earth, physically, but those things didn’t destroy the earth—they marred it and messed it up, but it didn’t perish.

“Take the moon out there. You look at the moon in a telescope, or from when we sent those (astronauts) up there and they left behind all that junk, and you see all these craters.

“Scientists will tell you they’re from meteors hitting it and all that stuff, but when you read Genesis 7, it talks about God opening the windows of heaven and bombarding the earth from outer space with water. Don’t you think that if the moon got in the way, it’d look like it was whacked? Yeah, sure. On Mars and all those planets are evidences of the concussion of the water and so forth.

“If you’ve got water in outer space, what kind of state would it be in? Would it be liquid, gas or solid? It’d be solid because it’s cold out there. That’s called ice. And when it hits something, it makes a hole in it; makes a pock-mark.

“So, yes, there are some physical changes resulting from the Flood but those heavens didn’t perish because there they are—we still see them! You follow what I’m saying?

*****

Another indicator the world already existed before the six days of creation is found in the very first two verses of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Jordan explains, “Do you see how it says, ‘And the earth was’?. . . There was already a physical existence of the universe before you start the first day in verse three. There’s earth, there’s water, there’s darkness, there’s the deep. In verse three He begins to work on the material that’s there in this ‘without form and void’ state.

“Without form means it didn’t have a purposeful shape to it. Void means it didn’t have any inhabitants. It was empty. It’s there, it just doesn’t have a usable shape or any inhabitants. It’s covered with water. This deep at that point extended uninterrupted all throughout and it’s dark. The whole universe had gone dark. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’

“Now, the six days are six, 24-hour literal days. They took place about six thousand years ago. I think that when people argue about what they call a ‘young earth,’ they’re right. I believe the earth we live on is young and that the events in Genesis 1—those six days—took place at that point, and that this activity in verse three and following. . . You know, it strikes me that if you have six days of making, and designing, and molding the creation as we know it, you could call that six days of evolution.

“If it’s ‘Zap!’ and it’s right there, that’s no evolution, but if you do it over a six-day period, couldn’t you say it evolved over a six-day period? Now, I know it’s not organic evolution, or Darwinian evolution; it’s not that kind of stuff. It’s the outworking of the design that God had.”

*****

Jordan continues, “There’s a group of people who use the term Intelligent Design. Well, intelligent design doesn’t only tell you there’s a Designer, it tells you He had an intelligent design. He had a plan! To me, that’s the exciting part!

“People will tell you that Genesis 1:2 is simply a summary statement of the way creation was as a result of God creating it and that, in verse three, He begins to take it and form it—molding it into what He wants—and that’s what’s going on there.

“In Isaiah 45:18, though, is a fascinating verse about creation that makes you begin to think of verse two in a little more of a focused manner. Isaiah writes, ‘For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.’

“See how He describes that? It’s what I was talking about in Genesis 2:4: ‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. He created the heavens.’ He formed the earth and made it; He fashioned it like He wanted.

“We’ve looked at that verses in Job about how He measured out certain things—the weight of things. He set a measuring rod; put a design into effect. He established it.

“Now, if He created it not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited, I can understand the forming of it. He fashions it in the first six days so it can be an inhabited earth.

“Proverbs 8 says God rejoiced in ‘the habitable part of his earth,’ but notice when it says that. When you then look at Isaiah 45:18—how He ‘formed it to be inhabited’—you can easily take that to be the six days of creation there.

“By the way, people who make a lot about the Hebrew words (in the Old Testament) like to tell you that when He says ‘without form and void,’ the Hebrew words are tohu (form) and bohu (void). ‘Tohu-bohu.’ People like to impress you with that.

“Over in Isaiah, when He says He ‘created it not in vain,’ that’s the Hebrew word that’s translated ‘without form’ in Genesis 1:2. So, Isaiah says He didn’t create it like verse two says it was, but He did form it like verse three and following says He did.

“Suddenly it clicks, ‘Wait a minute! There must be something going on here in Genesis 1:2 when He says the earth was ‘created without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’ It’s obvious that He creates it (in verse one), and then here it is (in verse two) in the condition after He creates it—‘without form and void’—and then He begins to mold it and work on it.

“By the way, darkness in the Bible—is that a good thing or a bad thing? It’s always bad. I John 1:5 is very clear that ‘God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.’ Okay, that’s why on the first day He creates light in the third heaven.

“Now, obviously this is not all laid out for you in the Book of Genesis, but you know very well the Bible is not a treatise and a lecture book. The Bible is a book where truth comes out of the living life situations of people’s thinking and is written out over a period of time.

“And so, you see, you find other information in other places about how it’s done. This expression ‘without form and void’ has another occurrence in the Bible in the Book of Jeremiah.

“Now, there’s some people—the Scofield Reference Bible does this and Scofield’s wrong when he does it—that say Jeremiah 4:23 is a cross-reference to Genesis 1. It’s not a cross-reference. It’s not a reference to the same thing, but it is a grammatical reference.

“Jeremiah 4 is not about a past event; it’s a future event. In Isaiah 14, talking about Satan and his fall—that’s a future event, but it looks to the past. Ezekiel 28, talking about Satan, is a future event—prophecy—looking back about the past. It’s somebody in the future looking back, saying, ‘This is what you said back over there and look what’s happened to you now.’

“Well, Jeremiah 4 is a passage about the Second Coming of Christ; the battle of Armageddon and the destruction of the satanic program in Revelation 19. But what I want you to see is in verse 23: ‘I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.’

“ ‘I beheld the earth’—God’s destroyed the enemy. Notice how the earth’s described—it was ‘without form and void’ and the heavens had no light. And he goes on down the chapter and describes things. Now, again, doctrinally this is future. But what’s it describing? It’s describing the earth after God’s judgment has been executed and before He restores it for the Millennium.

“ ‘Without form and void’ is a phrase that refers to the earth as a result of God’s judgment upon it and it comes at a time just previous to His restoration. So when you go back to Genesis 1:2 with that information, the potential then comes for there to be what is called a ‘Gap’ between verse one and two. That is, there’s a break between the two.

“He creates the heaven and the earth, not in vain—meaning He created it to be inhabited—and then something happened that resulted in God judging it. And that judgment put it in the condition of verse two, and then, in verse three, He comes to restore it. So you have creation, ruin and restoration.

“This is called the Gap Theory by it proponents and opponents. I think the better term is the ‘ruin-restoration’ (theory) because that’s what it is—made, marred and mended. It’s the kind of thing like, oh, reconciliation is.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued. . . )