The Original Fall ~ Darrell Wolfe, Storyteller

The First Civilization

The Original Fall

Pre-Adam Earth / Gap Theory / Fall of Angels

The Thought:

Big Picture...

Genesis 1:1 NKJV In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And Then...

Genesis 1:2 NKJV The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Some have said that this could be more accurately translated: "The Earth Became formless and void" If so, how did that happen. Then ask yourself, if Satan fell, becoming the prince of darkness and evil... WHEN did he fall? Obviously by the time Adam and Even were tending the Garden He has already been well under way as the master of trickery and deceit, coming to them disguised as a serpent. So Satan Fell BEFORE Adam walked earth... there is no indication that God paused the 7 day creation to deal with Satan and a war in heaven... What gives here? Can we know? That is my question today. In fact, as I begin this study, I don't know the answer... I'm hoping to find it as I go, pray, and study. Let's find it together.

The Background:

How simple our understanding has been. We read things in English, translated by people who, primarily, didn't speak English as a living language or live in/understand deeply the Hebrew Culture that contributed to both the Old and New Testaments. Many times, as western Christians, it's been through our enhanced understanding of Hebrew through Jewish scholars that we understand the bible better in recent years.

Now, I AM biased. I do filter through my world view. I admit it proudly! I believe the Bible is the perfect Word of God and the first place and final authority for all truth, I actually don't care what science's new flavor of the week theory is. Men who deny God become morons and believe all sorts of strange things. I care ONLY what the bible teaches.

However I am willing to admit that I don't speak Hebrew, even though I have become quite adept at using Strong Concordance for better understanding. Then again neither did the vast majority of bible scholars for the last 2000 years. Christians, after Rome took over the church, wrongly began to treat Jews as second class and nearly destroyed Hebrew as a language and culture. Though it never entirely died, Jews still spoke it and trained in their orthodox lifestyles in certain sub cultures throughout the world, little pockets of Hebrew remained. But we, western people that is, continued to treat them as second class and never took advantage of that training and knowledge that was being passed down. They are our brothers in Christ, and we treated them poorly at best for most of the past 2,000 years.

Therefore ALL biblical thought from Christians until recent years has been heavily based on tradition and religion and taken from scholars who took text that had been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, and mixed with Greek/Pagan ideas. No real understanding of Hebrew Language or Culture has been added to our biblical understanding until Christians and Jews began to work together, which has only been since about WWII. Even then, only more recently has their been real cooperation.

The Challenge:
So then I hear something one day, from a source I trust EXPLICITLY that knocks me back a bit. Billye Brimm, a woman of God who knows Hebrew better than most sources I know, begins to tell me that the earth was created BEFORE Genesis 1:2 and that God was re-creating it for man at that point. This was in the weekly messages on the BVOV broadcast:

Take Your Place Of Authority

Gloria Copeland and Billye Brim

Feb 6th - Feb 10th 2012

Well, this information took me by surprise, I have to admit that for the first time since I've known her I thought she might be getting a bit eccentric in recent years. But, I did some research into what she said, prayed and prayed, pondered, researched more, read the word... thought about it... I've come to the conclusion that she is right.

In fact, it seems so obvious that I don't know how I didn't see that before? It's always been my assertion that Genesis has three accounts of creation. All of them speaking about the same event from a different level of focus. Like a microscope zooms in closer and closer to see more detail, or a camera can give us panorama view or close up view; and much like a good novel can take you closer and closer telling the same story from different angles... God gives us three right up front, and the whole rest of the bible has pockets that fill out the story:

BIG PICTURE

Genesis 1:1 Panorama "God created the heavens and the earth"

ZOOM Level 1

Genesis 1:2 through Gen 2:3 This is what He did with the earth after creating it: Day 1, Day 2, etc...

ZOOM Level 2 More detail is given, looking back at it again, regarding what the process actually looked like.

Genesis 2:4-25

God's creation of plants and animals was NOT global, rather they were focused in the east in a Garden called Eden. The rest of the planet was just fertile ground and it was mans job to take the Garden and re-produce (Be fruitful, Multiply, Increase, Subdue and Have Dominion) what he saw in Eden on the rest of the planet. Gen 2:8
This is a closer look at the process of Man's creation and what God said to man and did with him after day 7.
The planet was ONE piece before being broken apart at/after the flood.

REMEMBER SEED:

If anything about Gen 2:8 confuses you, lest you think that somehow that contradicts what Gen 1 said consider this:

God ALWAYS works through seed. ALL that is needed for the apple tree is in the seed. The whole Kingdom of God is as a man who casts seed into the ground! (Gen 1:28, Mark 4:26)
So if God says to you "here is an apple tree". Then takes you to an empty dirt lot and hands you a seed. As far as God is concerned, He gave you an apple tree. Plant it! As far as God is concerned an Apple Tree is an Apple Tree whether it's a seed or fully grown, it's the same thing to God.
So when God hands you His Word and says "You are Rich!", as far as He's concerned it's done. He gave you the seed, plant it! Grow! Be Rich!
Pre-Curse seed didn't need to take months to grow. God could have shown Adam a seed, how to plant it, and then Adam could watch the seed grow to a full tree right before his eyes. There was no reason for it to take any time, there were no seasons pre-flood.

One of the best presentations of this idea that I could find, apparently known as the Gap Theory, was found at this blog: http://ojgraham.com/Genesis.htm and http://www.plaintruth.com/the_plain_truth/the-earth-became-formless-and-void.html

J.R.R. Tolkien in his Pre-Work for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit wrote fictional tales of the creation and pre-creation of earth. His tale is inspiring, and fictionalizes many things that the bible indicates really happened. His Ainur and Elves could actually both be taken for real things that occurred with the angels. Although the Silmarillion is fiction and not to be taken as anything more, I believe he was taping into, probably unaware, things that really took place. Because it's fiction much of it is NOT what really happened, but there is a certain essence that compels the bible student to wonder about passages that describe the war in heaven.

So now I am going to take time to study this out. This may be a multi-article study. Here is the basics of the common understanding of Gap Theory for a ground work, however I believe there may be dots that are not being connected by any of the writings I found. This is how I understand it, so far, with my own corrections placed in:

The Days before Days:

God creates the angel class BEFORE creating the heavens and the earth. (Job 38:2-12)
God creates the universe and the angels are these singing about it. (Job 38:2-12)
There is an earth, possibly with plants and animals and civilizations for untold many numbers of years. Any such civilizations that existed would have been angelic, and therefore just as intangible to us today as they are to us today. (Jeremiah 4:23-26)
Satan is said to have walked in the Eden, the Garden of God, before man. (Ezekiel 28:13-18)
Satan then led a great deception that managed to fool 1/3 of the angels, this is no small feat and didn't take place in the hours between creating the universe and starting the earth on day one. This would have been a major set of events.

"You defiled your sanctuaries By the multitude of your iniquities, By the iniquity of your trading; Therefore I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, And I turned you to ashes upon the earth In the sight of all who saw you. (Ezekiel 28:13-18)

Now this could just as easily be referring to forward looking prophecy of Satan's future instead of speaking about his past. For God the future is past tense already.

Satan took a third of the angels with him (Revelation 12:4-9)

So the earth is destroyed, by God as judgement, a sort of cleaning house moment, after the onset of these events.
One reading says that the word "The Deep" is the same word for the word "Abyss" which is used in revelation to talk about the jail of angels. This indicates that at the destruction of earth, the disobedient angels were locked away, for a time, in the Abyss.
The waters are full of darkness and chaos and the Spirit of God is hovering over the Abyss... who knows how long it stood like this... Then God's Word, Jesus, starts to speak again, the Spirit of God starts moving and things start happening...
Thus Day One, God is Light, the Sun isn't created yet, so He releases Himself into the darkness and chaos: LIGHT BE!
Thus he begins re creating the earth, this time, not to be inhabited, primarily, by angels, but a new class of beings. This class is created in God's Own Image, with God's own authority, a HIGHER class of beings than the angels themselves.

Both sides watch these events and marvel.
When Satan sees man given more authority and rights than he was created with he is OUTRAGED.
Thus ends the prelude, and opens Act 1, the days of creation.

Note about Fossils:

The Fossils we see today, are NOT from the pre-adam earth, that earth was a different class, the fossils we see today are from the Noah Flood. Dinosaurs obviously roamed the earth with men, because God described them to Job (who lived at the same time as Abraham) and seemed to indicate that Job should know who and what He was talking about.
Leviathan is also known as dragon in the AD ancient language, until a new word Dinosaur was used to replace that word. (Job 41:1-34, Psalms 74:12-15, Isaiah 27:1)
Just as the serpent was used by Satan and came to represent Him, so Leviathan also was a real creature that was mighty and scary, and came to represent Satan.

More Study to come, to be continued...

RESEARCH NOTES:

For references to this Gap Theory see:

For Gap Theory:

Against Gap Theory:

Old Earth vs Young Earth

I personally see no quality scientific evidence that the earth is millions of years old. I see lot's of people ignoring evidence on both sides of the issue because they only see what their world view allows them to see. Macro-Evolution (Atom to Adam) is a dying breed of science because it's bad science from the outset. Fossil records flatly deny the existence of one single hybrid creature, when in fact based on the theory of Darwin we should see MORE hybrids than fully developed creatures and MANY subtle changes. We don't, however. We see fully developed species in the fossil record and a complete absence of hybrid/changes. That alone debunks evolution completely. Even if they theoretically found one, it wouldn't matter, because we should see MORE of those that the fully developed species and it's just not there.

This is why so many rational scientists are coming up with insane answers like "life hitchiked on a comet to get to earth" or "aliens seeded the earth".

Now, I AM biased. I do filter through my world view. I admit it proudly! I believe the Bible is the perfect Word of God and the first place and final authority for all truth, I actually don't care what science's new flavor of the week theory is. Men who deny God become morons and believe all sorts of strange things. I care ONLY what the bible teaches. However I am willing to admit that I don't speak Hebrew, and neither did the vast majority of bible scholars for the last 2000 years. Christians, after Rome took over the church, wrongly began to treat Jews as second class and nearly destroyed Hebrew. Therefore ALL biblical thought from Christians until recent years has been heavily based on tradition and religion and taken from scholars who took text that had been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. No real understanding of Hebrew Language or Culture has been added to our biblical understanding until Christians and Jews began to work together, which has only been since about WWII.

See Below for some interesting references: