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It's true that a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 is one of the ideas proferred as an explanation of fossils and the supposed age of the earth and the fall of Satan and other things. I've known committed disciples who have believed this, and others who embrace the "day age" idea regarding the days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time. However, the text of Genesis 1 does not support a time gap there or anywhere else (and to support the day age idea ultimately requires turning the language of Genesis 1, as in Ben's question, into figurative language rather than a literal historical account). Furthermore, the gap idea doesn't help at all in reconciling the Bible with the modern myth of uniformitarian evolution since the accounts of producing light and vegetation and animals and even the sun, moon, and stars all are placed after Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of the material universe, verse two describes its initial (raw) state before God began to organize it and populate it, and the remaining verses describe the process of organizing and populating the creation. Isaiah 45:18 (and following) shows us that the initial condition (empty) was not the purpose, habitation by man was the purpose. The creation was not about a material universe, it was about a people belonging to God. Jesus places the creation of Adam and Eve "at the beginning" (Matt. 19:4) and Paul says that sin and death entered the world by man (Rom. 5:12ff), not before man. Moses summed up the making of heavens and earth and all their contents as six days (Exodus 20:11), binding together Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the passage. The genuinely figurative language of Ezekiel 28 compares the king of Tyre to a guardian cherub, perfect in every way, who was in Eden (Ezekiel 28:12-15) blameless, until wickedness was found in him. There is at least a suggestion in the use of the illustration that there was such a being, Satan, as yet perfect and blameless, who began to sin in the Garden. Jesus describes that wickedness by saying that Satan is a murderer and a lier (John 8:44) from the beginning. A murderer is a man-killer, which is what Satan did by his lies in the garden of Eden. Since Genesis 1:31 embraces all that God had made as being "very good" it would seem contradictory (to me at least) to suppose that there was already sin and destruction and rebellion in the creation (consider also Romans 8:18-25). And surely Satan himself, in his original glory, was one of those things made by God. Genesis chapter 1 verse 2, which of course is the second verse in the Bible seems to indicate that the earth was created in a formless and voided condition. Look these words up to see what they mean. "without form" To'-hoo; to lie waste: a desolation, a worthless thing. in vain, confusion, empty place, without form, nothing. a thing of nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness. But Isaiah 45:18 says, "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. There was something that happened between the first verse in the Bible and the second verse. God created the earth in a perfect state in the Beginning, and then there was a destruction that came about because of the rebellion of Satan, and then it was reconditioned by our Father which is the present earth age that we now live. This is the reason that the earth appears to be much older than 6 thousand years, because it is. This is of course one of the "arguments" out there.
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