Sample Chapter from Mike's New Book

Chapter 1 Excerpt

The Way It Was, by One Who was There

Through Faith We Understand

When I was a young man sixty years ago, we knew from the plain sense of Scripture that there was an indeterminate time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3. Our belief had nothing to do with attempting to accommodate the supposed geological ages of evolution, nor were we attempting to provide time for the apparent age of the fossil record. Our belief was based solely on the text of the Holy Bible. Any professing Christian who believed in Day Age or Theistic Evolution was considered an infidel. In the 1950s and early 60s, as far as I knew, all Bible believers readily understood that according to the Bible’s chronology about 6,000 years ago the Spirit of God moved upon the face of a lifeless planet that was without form and void, and there he commenced a creation week composed of six twenty-four hour days. In those six days God spoke into existence this present ecosystem, including all plants, animals, and humans; and no process of evolution was employed. “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” Psalm 33:9. 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: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Our confidence in "Spoken Word Creation" was not threatened by evolution, and we didn’t feel the need to harmonize the biblical record with it. We believed God, and that was enough. We just laughed at organic evolution and wondered how anyone could believe something so preposterous. We were able to win thousands of evolution oriented college students to faith in Christ with the Bible alone. The message of Christ overcame their skepticism with very little attention to evolution. When an unbeliever resisted the Bible by saying the earth was very old, we agreed and said something like “Of course; God created it a long time ago and placed a race on it that we now know as angels. Some sinned and became devils and some didn’t. God cursed the planet, destroying everything on it, and damned the fallen angels. About six thousand years ago God re-created this planet and replenished it with a new race that was not quite as smart or gifted as the first, and he gave us a free will so we could do as we pleased, but he offered the option to live in love and faith or to disobey and be damned like the angels that sinned. The fallen cherub entered paradise disguised as a recently created beast of the field. He spoke to Eve and informed her that God was preventing her from attaining special knowledge that would bring great fulfilment. Eve sinned, and then Adam chose to follow her in rebellion, taking his entire posterity with him. And that is why there is so much evil in the world, resulting in death and Hell… “But God who is rich in mercy….” And then with ten to twenty minutes of the gospel of Jesus, we had a new brother or sister in Christ. They stopped being evolutionists when they started believing Jesus was their savior, and we never had to debate the age of the earth. We didn’t care what they believed about geology; the issue was the integrity of the gospel narrative, for it had power to win hearts first and then minds. I saw it happen hundreds, maybe thousands of times. In recent years working in the prisons I have observed the same results. When you give people Jesus they forget the crutch of evolution without ever looking back. Evolution never made sense to them either, not even to their professors. They just assumed it because it was the alternative to a legislating creator.

Seashells and Sand

In the days before the arrival of Scientific Creationism and The Young Earth Theory, with its "one size fits all" attempt to answer geology and evolution, we simple believers knew that everything God created, regardless of how long ago, was created with the appearance of age. One second after creation all the trees had annual growth rings varying according to their apparent age. All vegetation was in various stages of development, appearing to be aged, some of it already matured and falling to the ground to be composted, providing nutrients for budding seedlings. The beach was covered with sand, as occurs over a period of time through the grinding action of surf. And old shells were strewn along the beach with hermit crabs peeking out here and there. The sea had the proper amount of salt. Coral reefs were in place teeming with new life representing every stage of development. The moon was cratered and streams showed erosion in the rounded, water washed rocks and sand— and all this just one minute after creation.

The Chicken or the Egg?

Remember the repeated question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” A Spoken Word Creationist answers, “Both.” A hen shedding old feathers was created sitting on an egg that was halfway through its incubation cycle, while a young and an old rooster fought over six hens in various stages of maturity, and another hen was leading her twelve little chicks down to the water where there were tadpoles that appeared to be two weeks old swimming around water reeds that had just blossomed and were being pollinated by bees whose hive was already half full of honey. The little chicks pecked at the fallen seeds and partly decomposed fruit until their attention turned to the tempting but allusive tadpoles. It was all in a day’s creation—or I should say, six days of creation. It could not be otherwise in this complex, interdependent ecosystem.

God Makes New Antiques

We know that the earth and universe were created with the appearance of age. To believe otherwise is to believe in some form of evolution, regardless of how you arrange the pieces. There is no other alternative for anyone who believes there is a God. This interdependent system must be activated fully intact for the individual parts to survive. It is aptly called “irreducible complexity” by the scientists. The greater miracle would be theistic evolution over a great period of time, for in this irreducibly complex system God would have to keep the clock ticking while he waited millions of years to create the parts necessary for it to tick. Why employ an absurdly complicated and counterproductive mechanism to achieve creation? Doing it that way, God would use up additional creation energy. Either God is the instant Spoken Word Creator, or he is a theistic evolutionist who created one piece at a time, supernaturally sustaining the individual parts that depend upon the yet uncreated parts to survive. Nature is a balance of competing forces, from the atom with its positive and negative charges to the ecosystem filled with rival fungi, enzymes, plants, insects, and animals, all dependent upon the mature function of the whole. An enzyme without a balancing enzyme would destroy a living organism. A flower without insects to pollinate it would not survive. Soil without composted matter to nourish its growth would perish. God is either an organic farmer, creating a system that is self-reliant and self-sustaining or he is a Monsanto Chemical kind of theistic evolutionary creator who creates a little at a time and applies artificial fertilizer to feed the plants until sufficient composed material is generated to sustain them naturally. And he would have to manually pollinate the plants until he decided to create myriads of insects that depend upon the pollen for survival. Instant Spoken Word Creation with built in age is the only possibility no matter when the earth was created, be it six thousand years ago or six billion years ago. Otherwise God would be exhausted and bored for years trying to keep a partial system functioning. Would an internal combustion motor run with only half of the parts assembled? So it is nothing new to believe in God creating with the appearance of age. He made new antiques. If they look old, all credit goes to the craftsmanship of the Creator. If you don’t think they are old, you will have a hard time proving it. He is just that good at making new things look old. When God created the stars of heaven, he didn’t wait one hundred million years for the light to reach his position. When he said, “Let there be light,” there was instant light all the way from the source to all corners of the universe. Light travels at a given speed but it was created with the appearance of having traveled for hundreds of millions of light years. And since all things were created with the appearance of age, there is no way to determine the age of the universe or this ecosystem by the scientific process. The only thing a scientist can do is determine how old God made it appear to be. There is abundant documentation that the early Christians and Jews reading the Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin texts believed that Genesis 1:1 recorded the creation of the earth and the universe prior to the beginning of the six days of creation. YET, the Young Earth Theory, a modern invention of scientists and pseudo-scientists, falsely asserts that what is now called the Gap Theory “…arose when Christian leaders tried to accommodate the millions of years claimed by scientific research which was done by unsaved geologists, for fossil layers.” When Young Earthers assert that “The Gap Theory” began in the 1800s they ignore its historical underpinnings and refer only to the bastardized version. They are denigrating old time Bible believers who believed in a gap long before anyone ever heard of evolution or geology. This is so easily proven that I have a hard time believing they are unaware of the facts. Ever since Moses wrote the book of Genesis there have been astute biblical textualists who understood that heaven and earth were created in the beginning, before the six days of creation recorded in Genesis 1:3 and following. But it was seldom mentioned just as no one mentioned the Young Earth Theory because the age of the earth was of little consequence to any subject other than the history of Lucifer and the angels. It wasn’t until natural science advanced to the point of observing the age of the earth and universe that the timeframe of Genesis became relevant. Then the doctrine of a gap was pulled from dusty old books to be endowed with new content by science worshiping, academic Christians who were intimidated by organic evolution. The Creation Science movement has put out false propaganda, leading Christians who don’t have a solid biblical or historical foundation to make a judgment not founded in facts. Young Earthers have seduced Christians with their “science,” causing them to become judges of the Bible, rejecting long standing traditional doctrine and replacing it with faith in the scientific interpretation of a few. Disciples of these Young Earth scientists, raised in this era of biblical ignorance, have succumbed to the flood (pun intended) of one-sided propaganda and have become militant in their assertions, denigrating and maligning traditional Bible doctrine that has been the belief of Bible students for more than 2,000 years. They attempt to marginalize those who still hold to traditional belief. Their single issue fervency, holding out the Young Earth Theory as a litmus test for orthodoxy, has evolved into a new ism with cult like intensity and zeal. The time has come to expose it.

Creationism has been hijacked by Young Earthism. So there is a new ism creating a schism and the division has induced a collision and merited derision that we did not envision fifty years ago.

This is a portion of my well researched new book, The Gap Fact and Out of Whack Scientism. For too long the Bible has been denigrated in the name of science. The time has come to provide a Biblical answer to this modern Christian scientism. You will be astounded by the historical facts exposing the false teaching of Scientific Creationism. Don’t send your children out into the world claiming the Bible teaches a flat earth or a 6,000 year old universe. We may be rejected for our belief in special creation and our rejection of evolution in any form, but we don’t need to solicit ridicule unnecessarily. You have heard the modern side of the gap fact; it is time to hear the historical Biblical truth of the matter. Pre-order The Gap Fact here!