(Ver 2.0)  This is now Part 3 of a series of lessons on the Bible creation account.  It has been a little different, I know.  I recommend that you remain open minded and search your Bible to see if these things are so.  If you have not been reading from the beginning of this series I would suggest that you start with “Part 1“.  In the previous blogs, I talked about scriptures that established the beginning of time and matter and then I talked about the foundation of the world.  This present world that we live in was said to have had a beginning, a middle and a coming end.  I then showed you scriptures of a world that is prophesied to come after our present world.  Today I want to show you scriptures that teach us about a different world that use to be, before God created our current organized world system.  Some Bible teachers in the past have referred to this as a “PreAdamic” civilization and I guess that is what I am saying even though that word is not in the Bible, so I do not normally use it.  Before I get there let me review again that we are living in the last days of our present world:

2Pe 3:3  Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

It is interesting to note how God reveals little clues about creation in randomly dispersed patterns in the Bible.  In this verse it declares that we are living within the “last days” of God’s timeline for His current organized world system.  These “days” of course could be figurative or symbolic words that are referring us to something else of much greater significance.  I do not believe they are literal 24 hour days, do you?  I have spent many hours studying this subject and I do believe that these days are symbolical representations for two 1000 year time periods.  The phrase “last days” in the Bible is almost always referring to the last 2000 years of the allotted time given to the church.  It might help you to see this by studying Genesis chapter 1 very closely and recognizing what happened on each day of creation.  During this time period of these 6 days of creation, God does specific things on specific days and these events are all prophetic works of God that are symbolic of spiritual things that occur within our human history.  According to the Bible God gives us another clue when He tells us that a “day” to the Lord is as a “1000” years and a “1000” years is even as 1 “day”  (2 Peter 3:8).  So when God tells us we are in the last days of time we can conclude that out of the 6 days of time given to man, the first two days represent a specific beginning period of time where there was no law and great sin.  The middle two days would represent another time period dedicated to the Old Covenant and God’s Law.  Finally the last two days would represent the end of the symbolic 6 days of creation and the New Covenant of God with the church when man finally comes to maturity in the spiritual realm.  This 6000 year time period of recorded Bible history, is why many Christian have been taught that the universe is only that old.  But, we need to see more in the Bible in order to make sure that is correct.

There are around 10 different verses in the New Testament that reveal the “Foundation of the World”.  It is almost always spoken of as a starting point and several of the verses in the New Testament also allude to the coming “End of the World”.  If our world had a start, then it also has a middle and an end that is reported to be a 6000 year period of time.  Could it be possible there was another world that existed prior to this time period?  I just wanted to start by asking you again, is it possible?  If you do not think it is even possible, why not?  What Bible verses do have that says there were no other worlds before ours?  If one world had a start, a middle and an end could there have been any other worlds with these same attributes and qualities?  If you still do not think so you again do not know what the Bible actually says on the subject.  Let’s explore some verses that Peter recorded for God that speaks to  us directly about creation and a world that use to be:

2Pe 3:5  For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

This is an amazing verse of truth.  It is clearly easily misunderstood so let’s analyze what God is telling us.  We can clearly see that creation was said to be a result of the spoken words of God.   It does not directly tell us when this event happened, but it also declares that the heavens that we can observe are very OLD and not a recent part of creation.  This verse would seem to refute the notion of a young earth and a young universe that many Bible teachers try to convince people of.  God would have had a great opportunity to confirm a young earth theory in this verse, but instead He tells us the opposite is true.  Next you can see a reference to Genesis 1:2, being stated, the earth standing out of the water and in the water.  It would appear that God is referring to the universal global flood found in Genesis 1:2 and I’ll explain why it cannot be Noah’s flood soon.  If you read the context of this verse you can see that Peter is talking about a group of people who claim that nothing in the world has ever changed.  These people seem to declare that everything has continued like it is now from the very beginning of time.  This almost sounds like some Christians professing a young earth.  In fact let’s go back and read verse 4 in this chapter to see what they were really saying:

2Pe 3:4  And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

People were scoffing and criticizing the disciples saying where is this Jesus you say is coming back?  These people believed that the earth had not undergone any changes since the beginning of creation.  Everything is the same since before our fathers died.  There is no resurrection, there is no coming messiah, there is no savior.  Everything continues just like it always has since the beginning of creation.  Did you notice that this time they did not say “since the foundation of the world”?  You can assume that these people thought that the foundation of the world and the beginning of creation were one in the same events.  They are specifically calling it young and making a clear reference to the beginning of all matter and time.  Was this only 6000 years ago like they thought it was?  God and Peter did not think so.  Go back and read verse 3 and see what God says that the heavens are very old.  God does not say 6000 years and God does not imply a young earth or universe.  God says very clearly and specifically that creation occurred a very long time ago.  This Greek word for “old” means “a long time”.  Is 6000 years a long time to God?  God wrote that in Revelation 12 that Satan is extremely angry knowing that his time is short.  Since God declares this almost 2000 years ago, we can easily conclude that 2000 years to God is a very short time.  So if 2000 years is a short time to God what is 3 x 2000 or 6000 years to God?  A little bit or a short time multiplied by 3 is still not much to God.  If you do not understand God’s perspective on the Bible you will be confused to what it means.  To God a long time would have to be millions or billions of years and not a few thousand years.   Keep in mind the author of the Bible is God and God wrote the Bible from His perspective and not yours.  We also have to observe what else God tells us in this chapter.  Let’s examine verse 6 and see what God is saying to us:

2Pe 3:6  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

This is God’s response to these critics that say nothing has ever changed since the beginning of creation.  God declares to us that there was a world prior to our world that was destroyed and covered with water.  The net result of this covering was the complete destruction of this previous organized system.  Remember that the Greek word kosmos translated as “world” means “an organized system” or “an orderly arrangement”.  The Greek word translated as “then was” means “at that time”.  We can clearly see that God tells us that time existed when this total destruction occurred.  So sometime after the creation of the earth and before Genesis 1:2, there existed an organized world system that was completely destroyed by water.  Many Bible teachers have attempted to explain this verse away calling it just Noah’s flood, but that cannot be so easily accepted as the truth, if you study the exact Greek wording very carefully.  The Greek word translated as “perish” in this verse means “to destroy fully”.  It literally means that this world being described was completely and utterly lost with no survivors.  Meaning there were NONE as in NOT ANY living creatures that existed after this flood event or anything that was saved from the destruction.  There is absolutely no way that we can make this fit the flood that occured during the time of Noah!  Noah and his family were all saved (8 people in total)  and they were all survivors of that flood.  Plus all of the animals on the ark also survived that flood.  After Noah’s flood God did not have to recreate any new trees or plants either.  Everything that was there before the flood of Noah came back as if nothing happened after the flood of Noah.  There was no utter destruction of the earth as described in this verse that speaks of the universal devestation of everything.  Go and reread Genesis 7 the flood account of Noah and see nowhere does God speak of utter or complete destruction.  God said in Genesis 7 that He would destroy the flesh of the earth, but this was not all-inclusive since God did not have to create any new flesh after the flood ended.

2Pe 3:7  But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

So why would God write about the “world that now is” being destroyed by fire if this universal flood was Noah’s flood?  You can clearly see the distinction that this world that we are now in, is NOT the same world that was destroyed by this flood of water.   We are now seeing a perspective of a world that existed that was completely destroyed by a universal flood of water.  So when was this cataclysmic flood that caused everything to perish referred to in 2nd Peter?  It has to be the flood that is mentioned to us in Genesis 1:2, where the earth was covered with water and darkness was on the face of the deep, it can technically be no other event that I have found in the Bible:

Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

We can see a description of circumstances that is informing us that the earth as described in this verse was completely uninhabitable.  It clearly describes a universal flood situation that has covered the entire face of our planet.  It also states that darkness covers the earth meaning that the water was so deep that light could not penetrate to allow anything to live beneath the surface.  Did you know that this state of creation directly contradicts other clues that God gives us in the Bible that tells us that this is not how God created the earth originally?  This next verse is absolutely critical for you to understand:

Isa 45:18  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.

This verse found in Isaiah represents God’s commentary on creation.  God gives us some very important information in this verse and I guess many Christians do not understand the significance of it or just ignore it.  This is a valuable clue to understanding the Bible creation account so pay very close attention to exactly what God is saying.  We can see many of the same Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:2 repeated also in this verse.  This helps us to establish subject relevance and relationship.  In Genesis 1:1 it says “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.  This verse of scripture in Isaiah also declares to us that God created the heavens and the earth so God is definitely discussing the same event in both verses.  But here in IsaiahGod says that when He made the earth originally, it was clearly an organized system created in an inhabitable and a useful state of existence.  God clearly says I do not create anything in vain.  The exact same Hebrew word is repeated in this verse in Isaiah that declares the earth to be “formless” or “without form” in Genesis 1:2.  But, this time God tells us that I did not create the earth this way yet it was this way in Gensis 1:2 so we have a major problem that needs resolution.  Do you think that God is giving us a clue by revealing this information to us?  I think that God is giving us more than a clue, let’s review the Hebrew definition of this word found in the Strong’s:

H8414

From an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), that is, desert; figuratively a worthless thing; adverbially in vain: – confusion, empty place, without form, nothing, (thing of) nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness.

This is a very strong word and leaves little to the imagination.  This word calls the earth a worthless state of confusion in Genesis 1:2, and it clearly implies that something occurred to cause it to become this way.  The earth is described in Genesis 1:2 as a place that is a wasteland, an uninhabitable planet, an empty place without any organization.  To be “formless” and “void” you have to agree that the earth is not a livable place.  Then you can clearly see that God says in Isaiah this is not how it was created in the beginning.  So now we have a problem, we can see that many people have attempted to teach that the earth and the universe is only 6000 years old, but God is telling us some very different things in the Bible.  We have to interpret the Bible using the Bible to get an accurate understanding of what it actually means.  Only by interpreting the Bible correctly can we ever attempt to agree with true science.  We can see that God is the creator and caused all time and matter to have a beginning.  In Genesis 1:1 God created these things to be livable and inhabitable, but by reading Genesis 1:2 we can clearly see that the earth is not inhabitable so we have to conclude that something happened to destroy the earth and the livable organized systems that God had originally created.  That is why we see in Genesis 1 the reestablishment of the organized systems of our current world.  By God recreating the world, we have a place that is again livable.

I recently had a man discount this verse because he claimed that after God’s 6 days of creation the earth was created inhabitable and thus he explained away what is stated in the Bible using his human reasoning.  This same man when confronted on another question said God created the universe with the appearance of age fully mature.  That logic is a contradictory position of two different ways to explain why the Bible says what it does to justify a young earth theory.  On one had he said the stars were created mature and on the other hand the earth was created without from and became mature or inhabitable.  This is clearly contradictory to what God says in Isaiah.  God specifically says I never create anything without form and since the earth starts out without form you must conclude God did not create it then.  Do you see the problem?  Genesis 1:1 says God did create the earth and Genesis 1:2 says it was without form so something else had to occur to change the earth from an inhabited starting point to an unimhabitable mess.  God would not have created something from chaos by starting it out as something in a state of confusion and then changing it into what He intended in the first place.  Everytime God said something during creation in Genesis 1 it occurred just exactly like He said.  There were no transitional periods of evolution occuring.  God spoke and there it was fully complete.  If God would have said earth be, the earth would have been created and formed in its fully mature state as designed.

Let’s think about what Genesis 1 actually says.   Many have tried to establish the 6 days of creation in Genesis 1 as being the beginning of all time and matter of our universe.  But, if you look at the chapter carefully, using other Bible verses that we have already learned about, that everything was made by the Word of God, we can begin to see what really happened.  Nowhere in chapter 1 of Genesis does God ever say “Let there be Space!”, “Let There Be Stars”, “Let There Be Earth” or “Let There Be Time”.  These are all implied in Genesis 1:1, but never stated explicitly.  However, approximately 7 times in the chapter God does say “Let there be…” something and it comes forth either into existence or back into prominence.  You see on day 4 of creation it could be wrongly assumed that the Sun and the moon are created, but God only uses them as a prophetic statement of information for the coming of Jesus Christ.  You see the Sun already has to exist for the earth to exist.  The earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.    The earth is not older than the sun.  Both of these have to come into existence simultaneously as part of God’s original creation.  Then there is the statement of the 3rd Day of creation, that God creates plants, grass, trees and they all come forth.  Do you know that sun light is an absolute requirement for the existence of any plant life on our planet?   If plants existed on Day 3, then the sun also existed on Day 3.   Without the sun, the existence of life on this planet would be impossible.  So we have to be smart enough to recognize when God speaks and when He does not speak and what He says on everyday of the recreation account in chapter 1 of Genesis.

Let me give you another valid question found in Genesis 1.  On day 1 of creation is a stated evening and morning day 1 of God’s timeline.   Morning and evening are both sun based dependent concepts of the earth’s rotation around it.  Because the earth rotates on its axis the sun appears to rise every morning and set every evening around the earth.  Therefore the sun must exist on Day 1 for there to be any reference to these events.  Without the sun’s existence we have no day or night, morning or evening nor do we have a calendar day.  These are major problems that most young earth Bible teachers ignore or try to explain away using God’s sovereign power or ability to superceede natural laws that God has created.  All earth time is based upon the existence of the sun.  Without the sun we have no hours, days, weeks or years.

Now let’s further examine what God tells Adam in Chapter 1 of Genesis.  In Genesis 1:28 God makes this very specific command to the man “Be Fruitful, Multiply and Replenish the Earth..”.   Now the word “replenish” is a very unique English word.  While there is no English word to “plenish”, to “replenish” carries a connotation of doing something again, and it still implies that the world was once filled with inhabitants.  God is now telling Adam to refill the earth with inhabitants again.  If God tells Adam to refill the earth, we can clearly see that something must have transpired to cause it to need this to happen.  If I asked you to replenish the cold drinks in the refrigerator that tells you that there were cold drinks there once, but something happened to them and we need to put more in to get cold.  This is not rocket science, so pay attention to what God is saying.  I have heard many Bible teachers attempt to explain away this statement  in terms that God is just telling them to fill the earth and not to refill the earth.  However, God gives us another very important clue to exactly what this means when He uses the exact same words later in Genesis:

Gen 9:1  And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

So if after the flood of Noah’s day God tells Noah to replenish the earth we can clearly see that God is saying the earth use to have more people in it and I expect it to be filled again.  A vast number of people perished in the flood of Noah’s day.  God is giving us a clue into the Genesis 1:2 flood by repeating this exact set of instructions to Noah that God first gave to Adam.  God was telling Adam that the world use to be covered with people, cities, organized inhabitation and now we need to redo that again.  This helps us to explain and understand many things that science has been reporting.  This knowledge gets us several steps closer to agreeing with true science.

Here is another potential major problem and conflict that modern Bible teachers and scientists have attempted to explain away with a more recent flood event theory ignoring the ancient flood Bible truth reality.  You see there were two universal floods revealed to us in the Bible and many modern Bible teachers and scientists want to ignore the first flood in Genesis 1.2 in favor of a shorter duration flood event called Noah’s flood found in Genesis 7.  You understand that since we are not told the duration of the flood event of Genesis 1:2 it could have been a flood of millions or even billions of years.   Because I do not know how long it was I will not speculate to the given duration of time that occurred.  However we do very clearly know how long Noah’s flood was and when it started exactly because God does give us this information in detail.  There was 1656 years after the creation of Adam when the flood of Noah occurred and came upon the earth after it rained for 40 days a 40 nights (Gen 7:12).  We know this by calculating the ages of every man from Adam to Noah and then reading that the flood came when Noah was 600 years old (Gen 7:11) and his triplet sons were 100 years old.

Now according to Genesis 7:24, the flood waters during Noah’s flood prevailed on the earth for only 150 days and not many years.  This 150 day flood is what many ignorant modern scientists say caused the fossil record in the earth’s crust, all of the earth’s geological layers, water landscape formations and the fossil fuel layers miles beneath the surface of planet.  That is some very creative science in my estimation that all of this formed in a flood that lasted a very short duration and less than 4500 years from present human time.  People want you to believe that and these are baseless theories that are more imaginative than evolutionist’s theories.

There was a geologist named James Hutton that observed and studied the earth nearly 300 years ago and he came up with a theory then that many have said is the basis for modern geological science.  I have included exerts of his writings below and you should read them with the knowledge of both floods in your mind and then try to determine which flood fits the description of his observations more clearly from the Bible record given to us.  If you are open you should observe that only one flood event is more accurately described from the evidence presented in the earth’s layers.

The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores. Hence we find reason to conclude:

1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes.

2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And,

Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was than inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.

Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of the waters, two things had been required;

1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials;

2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean.

I read this theory and thought this was more the description of the conditions found in Genesis 1 and never Genesis 7.  Nowhere in Noah’s flood does God separate water from water and cause the earth to rise above the level of the seas as He does in Genesis 1:6.  While I do not agree with every word that James Hutton wrote in his theory it has many things that are clearly important to understand in light of the evidence given to us in the Bible.  In the article that read about him it said this; he was more interested in the contemplation of the truth than he was in the praise of discovering it.  Why are Christians today not following his example of searching for the truth?  No, they are mostly searching for evidence to support their theories and this is fallacy and a misdirected effort to nowhere.  I’m going to say this one more time; true science and true Bible interpretation will always agree because both were created by the same Author God.

I have just shown you significant evidence found in the Bible for the existence of a inhabited world prior to our world.  This world would have had inhabitants, animals, cities, and other organized structure.  I do not know how advanced or how primitive this civilization was.   I do not know if the people were human beings like us, or more like angels.  I would guess that this world was very primitive, but yet later I will show you verses that seem to imply some advancement in culture and organization.  This information does help to explain dinosaurs and the fossil records that would indicate an old earth.  Many Bible teachers have great difficulty trying to come up with a logical reasoning of where the dinosaurs went in the last 6000 years?  Perhaps they just didn’t fit on the ark of Noah’s day?  However, once you begin to understand that the earth is very old and that there existed an older civilization on this planet then you can begin to understand the Bible creation and how it fits with science.  In this world that existed prior to ours, God declares that it was utterly destroyed, nothing was left from it and we can see this in Genesis 1:2 as being the state of our planet and the basis for God’s recreation in the remaining verses of Genesis chapter 1.  I have heard some Bible teachers who claim a young earth say that dinosaurs were here with man at the same time.  They have found fossils that include dinosaur footprints with human like foot prints inside of them.  They would have had to exist together in order for the fossil to form and harden and preserve them for us to see.  However, these Bible teachers have simply discovered evidence for the world that was and not the world that is.  They prove nothing and still do not have an answer for where did the dinosaurs go in the last 6000 years.  There must have been a tremendous number of dinosaurs, plants and other animals on our planet based  upon the amount of fossil fuel we have beneath our surface.  Oil and gas came as a result of a large biological decomposition of living things.  How did these dead biological things get to be so deep beneath the surface of our planet?  If you consider that the earth was completely destroyed in Genesis 1:2 and covered with water completely so that no life could exist you can begin to understand where these fossil fuels came from.  Otherwise you have great difficulty in coming up with a young earth answer to the problem.  God does not tell us how long the earth was covered in water in Genesis 1:2.   It could be a few days or millions of years.  Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 do not have any time periods specifically attached to them.  After these two verses God starts talking of the 6 days of the earth’s recreation.  But, before that there is no time table mentioned.  Because it does not say we would be foolish to guess without either a specific Bible verse or some very strong scientific evidence.

In my next blog I will show you further scriptures that speak of directly of this world that was.  If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 4“.