The greatest advantage to realizing the validity of the Gap Theory, or the ruin-restoration doctrine, is “it lets you understand the plot of the Bible in a way that, without it, you don’t really have the ability to do,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan.

“It lets you understand why the heavens and the earth are created in the form and fashion they’re in,” he explains. “God once said to Job, ‘Look at creation—what do you know about it? I’ve got pre-fixed, pre-positioned munitions for the day of battle and war.’ When is that? The Second Advent. The battle of Armageddon.

“When God built this universe, He built it with a battle in mind. That’s why Gen. 1:2 uses ‘last days’ battle-of-Armageddon terminology to describe its beginnings. That’s why when He reconstructed the thing in those six days (of creation), He set it up as a pre-staged battlefield.

“He tells Job, ‘There’s a place I’m going to put death and lock it in; I’ve already got a pre-arranged place down here for the lake of fire.’

“If He did that in those six days, what does that tell you? He knows there’s going to be a fight. The conflict must already be going. It was there—a fall, a ruin, and then a re-staging for the battle. You follow that?

“When Lucifer rebels, the governmental structure was there in the original creation. Satan says, ‘I’m going to go take it over and be like the most high. I’m going to be the possessor of the heaven and the earth that God’s created.’ So there was a fight. What’s the fight over? The universe.

“And the world that then perished in the judgment had a new creation placed upon it; a reconstructed creation that’s a pre-arranged theatre in which the battle engaged by Satan against God could (one day) be settled.

“And when that battle is settled, you know what Revelations 21:1 says? That thing in Exodus 20:11 (‘For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day’) goes away.

“That battlefield structure is eliminated and the ‘dispensation of the fullness of time’ in the new heavens and earth (defined in II Peter 3:13) takes up. But when it does, this whole thing is revamped, and that revamping is not simply a submerging of the earth in water.

“That revamping is a whole restructuring of the whole universe—the heavens perishing as well as the earth, and the elements melting with a fervent heat and becoming without form, without structure.”

*****

Jordan continues, “There are two things about using a King James Bible that are important to this discussion. No. 1, the King James Bible was written before all of the modern scholarship and textual criticism that started in the 1800s, so it’s not corrupted by the modern ‘churchianity’ and scholarship.

“Two, it was also written prior to the earth science writings of the last three or four centuries. When the King James Bible was written, there were no great geological scientists and studies and so forth.

“The Gap Theory is said to have been developed by a guy (Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers) in the early 1800s. What’s interesting is it was developed before Darwin and the writings of Darwinian evolution. It also came before the great discoveries of the geological studies of the earth and trying to develop the age of the earth through the study of the fossil record and all that kind of stuff.

“So, the Gap Theory, or the ruin-restoration idea, was developed before that and consequently it itself is a little precursor. Now, people argue the Gap Theory was a recent invention to be a compromise against evolution, but there’s no logic in that.

“To say there was a break between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 rules out any possibility of any living creature today having evolved from a previous world. Because, if there was a previous world and it was destroyed and it perished, then there’s nothing back there that would remain alive that could have evolved into present-day living forms. You see that? It’s nothing of a compromise with evolution.

*****

Jordan recalls how at age 15, in 1963, he participated in debate about evolution as a member of the debate club at his high school.

“I volunteered to be on the creationist side, and as we discussed it, my assignment was to show how the Bible refuted evolution,” he says. “Now you could do that back then, and what I did is teach exactly what I’m talking to you about.

“I said, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void. . . Obviously something happened—what was it?’ The judgment of God came on creation and all that was there previously died and was done away.

“The old world perished and God started all over again with a brand-new creation six thousand years ago. Nothing that lives today could possibly be an evolution from anything from a previous life or previous world because God judged on it and Zap! it was gone.

“To me, as a 15-year-old, the Gap doctrine was a thing that said there’s NO possibility of evolution, so you can imagine my surprise and chagrin when the ‘young earth’ people came along and said, ‘Oh, Rick, when you teach that, you’re just compromising with the evolutionists.’ I thought it did away with evolution!

“The problem is that what the ‘young earth’ people have to deal with, and it’s a real difficulty for them, is what’s called the fossil record—the geological record of what’s in the earth; it’s crust, mantle, core. They’re required to put all of that as being a result of the Flood.

“And so they don’t want a Gap Theory—nothing previous to here. Now, again, I don’t compromise at all with evolution. Actually the gap theory denies the potential of organic evolution of any kind of any species—plant or animal—because they all perished. But it does give you an intellectual and an honest way to deal with the actual presence of evidence.”

*****

Many people like to pontificate about how Romans 5:12 destroys the Gap Theory. The verse says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

“The argument,” explains Jordan, “is there couldn’t have been death prior to Adam because there was no sin prior to Adam, but is that right? No! Was there sin before Adam? Yeah! A guy named Lucifer became Leviathan!

“Well, then what does the verse mean? ‘By one man sin entered into world—what world is that? Well, wouldn’t it be the world of Adam? Did Adam’s sin put sin into the angelic world? No, so what world did it enter into? The world of man. The world we live in; ‘our world,’ if you want to put it that way.

“The verse doesn’t say there was no sin before Adam. It says sin entered into the world of Adam. Where’d sin come from? If it entered, would you think it was there before? I mean, even the verse itself gives you to think that sin was there in existence before Adam and it entered into Adam’s world. It didn’t appear, it didn’t originate—it entered. When you enter something, you go through it; go into it.

“I think it’s crazy to use Romans 5 to try to deny there was sin before Adam. In Dr. (Kent) Hovind’s book (about the Gap Theory), when he addresses this issue, he actually will not say that Satan fell before Adam! When it gets right up to it and he’s pushed, he won’t say, and I find that compelling as a scriptural problem. I don’t care what archaeology or geology, or what the fossil record says—I care what God’s Word says.

“When God put Adam in the Garden, He said there’s a tree; He said it’s the knowledge of good and evil. I’m sorry, but evil already existed and the God of the Bible didn’t create it! If you believe the God of the Bible did create it, then you’ve got a different God than I’ve got.

“There was a creature God made ‘who was perfect from the day he was created, until iniquity was found in him,’ and he was the ‘anointed cherub that covered.’ We call him Satan. It was he who came to Eve as the serpent and denied God’s Word and tempted her to sin, so to say sin entered into the world by Adam, and therefore death could not have existed before Adam, is just a denial of the scriptural proof. Romans 5, instead of being the death knell to the Gap Theory, is really a verse where people kind of hang themselves and clown around.

*****

Exodus 20:11 is another verse used by opponents of the Gap Theory. It says, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Jordan explains, “This argument goes, ‘Well, see, God made heaven and earth and all that in them is,’ and Satan’s in here, so he had to make Satan in those seven days. Therefore, there could not have been a pre-creation. There’s only one creation.’

“But notice I left something out of that verse? It’s in six days the Lord ‘made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.’ When did He make the sea? That’s the sea that’s in Isaiah 27:1: ‘In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.’

“When did he make this thing? On the second day. Gen. 1: 6-9. So, what’s Genesis 1:1 say? ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the sea’? No. You see, He says this in such a way (in Exodus 20) so you know what He’s talking about here is this creation, and by the way, it doesn’t even say that. It says, ‘For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.’

“He’s talking about the fashioning of this thing. So that verse isn’t really saying there was no previous creation. It just says, ‘Hey, the world you live in, He made in six days,’ and that’s the issue you’ve got to remember—the plan He’s got about that creation. And when He adds the sea, He’s talking about something in there that had to do with taking care of that bad guy that’s in there.

“Remember in Job 38, talking about this six-day recreation of the heaven and the earth—

the six-day renovation, remodeling, whatever you want to call it—God tells Job the lake of fire is down at the bottom of that universe? Just like God’s throne is up at the top, the lake of fire is down at the bottom of that thing.

“Job 9:9 talks about ‘the chambers of the south.’ God’s got a chamber down there at the bottom of the universe where He’s going to put darkness and death, and it’s called the lake of fire, of which He says, ‘I have reserved for the time of trouble against the day of battle and war.’

“He’s saying, ‘I’ve got these ammunition dumps out here in the universe--these treasures, these storehouses with hail. You read that in Revelation about the hail coming out of heaven. God says, “I’ve got that all pre-positioned, ready to go.”