Virtue Magazine

There are two main theories that I am currently aware of (and I think that there are more) that attempt to compromise Creation to fit evolution: the day-age theory and the gap theory.

The day-age theory says that the six literal days of Creation were in fact not literal days at all, but thousands or millions of years. Something like “and there was evening, and there was morning, and there was evening, and there was morning, and there was evening, and there was morning (ad nauseum), the first day”. People cite II Peter 3:8 as proof for this: “… With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day.” (NIV) This does not make much sense, however: on the third day, He created the plants “according to their kinds”. Then on the next day, He created the sun and moon and stars. The poor plants would have a tough time getting through the millions of years before the sun evolved to provide them with light. Also, the birds were created on day five, with the land-dwelling animals the next day. But according to evolution theory, birds evolved from land animals.

And I think that these people are taking the verse from II Peter a little out of context. Peter speaks in the previous verse of the day of the Lord, when evildoers will receive the punishment that has been awaiting them, and the righteous will receive their reward. He tells his readers to be patient, because the Lord will accomplish it in His own good time; and He is not constrained by the limits of time as we are. I do not think that Peter was intending to say that when the Lord does something in one of His “days” it seems like a thousand years to us, or vice versa. The scriptures seem very clear on the point that they were in fact actual days, and not meant figuratively for a great length of time.

The gap theory says that there was a “gap” of thousands or millions of years between the creation of animals and the creation of man, or between day five and day six. But this is disproved by the fact that death entered the world through sin. Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin…” (NIV) If Adam brought death into the world through his sin, then please explain what had happened to all of those misfits that had been evolving for the past 4 million years or whatever. The main engine of the theory of evolution is death, and death was not in the world until Adam brought it by sin.

I don’t understand why anybody would want to throw away a perfectly good, sound, reasonable thing as the account which the Lord gives us in the first chapter of Genesis by diluting it with the godless theory of a bald-headed man with a bushy white beard. Firstly, why don’t we just believe what God tells us? He says that He created everything in six days; why can’t that be enough for us? Why do we have to try to reconcile what He says to some phony man-made theory?

And secondly, surely it is not in the character of God to use this method to create the universe, a method that requires a huge amount of death and suffering, where the weaker members of a species are eliminated in order to form a new species. At the end of the six days, he looked at it and declared it “very good”. If there was so much misery and imperfection, how on earth could it be “very good”? Truly, this would be a pretty weak God that couldn’t get it right the first time.