Memory Text: “And to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3:9, NKJV).
Sunday’s lesson makes an important point: If we are all just the products of time and chance, what we do is determined by the same forces that made us what we are. We do what our molecules determine that we will do. Determinism inevitably follows scientific materialism, and determinism means that we are not free moral agents and cannot be held responsible or accountable for our actions.
How does the concept of a judgment make sense, when every “decision” we think we have made was actually just the interplay of chemical and physical forces?
The best that evolutionary theory can do is to tell us that the moral and ethical ideas that seem so real to us evolved as some sort of coping mechanism that increased our chances of survival; morality is not ultimately real, and we cannot really be judged. Judgment can be real only if we were, and are, free moral agents who have the choice to do wrong or do right. All concepts of judgment and morality, right and wrong, crime and punishment, ultimately rest on a belief in a Creator God who created us with free moral agency, with the free choice and the ability to choose right or wrong.
The message of the three angels flying in midair in Revelation 14 announces that “the hour of His judgment has come.” (Rev. 14:7, NKJV) Since we were created by God with the capacity to make moral choices, we are responsible for the decisions we make. If we were merely a random collection of cells that evolved only via natural processes, our “choices” would not really be free choices, but would be determined by the non-divine chemical and physical forces over which we had no control.
But judgment implies moral responsibility. In this crisis hour of earth’s history, the judgment hour, God calls us to make decisions in the light of eternity. That the hour of judgment has comes implies that there is a Creator, and indeed the very same angel implores us to “worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of waters” (Rev. 14:7, NKJV).
Tuesday’s lesson reminds us that every attempt to alter our reading of Scripture so as to compromise with Lyellism, or long-ages geology is doomed to failure. It destroy’s the Bible’s teaching that death is linked to sin, and thus the fossil record represents a post-sin record, laid down by the Genesis Flood.
One advantage of Adventism is that our modern-day prophet has warned us, quite strongly and specifically, that we cannot compromise our reading of Scripture on this point:
“I was then carried back to the creation and was shown that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week. The great God in his days of creation and day of rest, measured off the first cycle as a sample for successive weeks till the close of time. . . . On the seventh day of the first week God rested from his work, and then blessed the day of his rest, and set it apart for the use of man. The weekly cycle of seven literal days, six for labor, and the seventh for rest, which has been preserved and brought down through Bible history, originated in the great facts of the first seven days.
“When God spake his law with an audible voice from Sinai, he introduced the Sabbath by saying, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” . . . “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.” This reason appears beautiful and forcible when we understand the record of creation to mean literal days. The first six days of each week are given to man in which to labor, because God employed the same period of the first week in the work of creation. The seventh day God has reserved as a day of rest, in commemoration of his rest during the same period of time after he had performed the work of creation in six days.
“But the infidel supposition, that the events of the first week required seven vast, indefinite periods for their accomplishment, strikes directly at the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. It makes indefinite and obscure that which God has made very plain. It is the worst kind of infidelity; for with many who profess to believe the record of creation, it is infidelity in disguise. It charges God with commanding men to observe the week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike his dealings with mortals, and is an impeachment of his wisdom.
“Infidel geologists claim that the world is very much older than the Bible record makes it. . . . And many who profess to believe the Bible record are at a loss to account for wonderful things which are found in the earth, with the view that creation week was only seven literal days, and that the world is now only about six thousand years old. These, to free themselves of difficulties thrown in their way by infidel geologists, adopt the view that the six days of creation were six vast, indefinite periods, and the day of God’s rest was another indefinite period; making senseless the fourth commandment of God’s holy law. Some eagerly receive this position, for it destroys the force of the fourth commandment, and they feel a freedom from its claims upon them.”[i]
“It is one of Satan’s devices to lead the people to accept the fables of infidelity; for he can thus obscure the law of God, in itself very plain, and embolden men to rebel against the divine government. His efforts are especially directed against the fourth commandment, because it so clearly points to the living God, the Maker of the heavens and the earth.
“There is a constant effort made to explain the work of creation as the result of natural causes; and human reasoning is accepted even by professed Christians, in opposition to plain Scripture facts.”[ii]
“Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have . . . led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the word of God. Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from chaos; and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years.
“Such a conclusion is wholly uncalled for. The Bible record is in harmony with itself and with the teaching of nature. Of the first day employed in the work of creation is given the record, “The evening and the morning were the first day.” Genesis 1:5. And the same in substance is said of each of the first six days of creation week. Each of these periods Inspiration declares to have been a day consisting of evening and morning, like every other day since that time. In regard to the work of creation itself the divine testimony is, “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Psalm 33:9. With Him who could thus call into existence unnumbered worlds, how long a time would be required for the evolution of the earth from Chaos? In order to account for His works, must we do violence to His word?”[iii]
There is no way to reconcile Lyellism with biblical truth. Unfortunately, many Christians have tried, offering several theories in an attempt to accommodate the Bible to Lyellian geology. These accommodationist theories have common characteristics.
First, instead of interpreting the earth’s crust in the light of biblical history, they reinterpret the Bible to make it fit geological theories. Second, the accommodationist theories typically interpret most of the fossiliferous strata as the residue of long ages that passed before man was created, which has the effect of decoupling disease, predation, suffering, and death from Adam’s sin and the Fall of mankind. The terrible things that we find in the fossil record must therefore have been part of God’s original creation, which He called “good.”
1. The diluvium theory
One of the earliest accommodationist theories was William Buckland’s “diluvium” theory. He and several of his contemporaries taught that much of the Pleistocene layer, then often called the “diluvium” or the “drift,” was deposited during the Genesis Flood. But these men also taught that the lower strata were formed hundreds of thousands of years before Adam was created, which deviates from the biblical doctrine that God created the plants and animals in one week just a few thousand years ago.[i]
After he was shown that the “diluvium” was primarily the work of glaciers, glacial till, not floodwaters, Buckland abandoned his diluvium theory in favor of the “tranquil theory,” which held that Noah’s Flood left no residue.[ii]
2. The gap theory
A more prominent accommodationist theory is the “gap theory,” also known as the “active gap,” “ruin and restoration,” “pre-Edenic ruin,” “ruin and reconstruction” and “interval” theory. It postulates that a very long interval of time elapsed between Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”) and Genesis 1:2 (“And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”).
The gap theory is attributed to Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a Scottish Presbyterian pastor. Although it has many variations and has changed over the centuries, its core is that, during the supposed “gap” between the first two verses of Genesis, there existed a previous creation on this Earth.
The earliest versions of the gap theory teach that Lucifer ruled this previous creation, which was peopled by a race of beings without souls. Desiring to become like God, Lucifer eventually rebelled (Ezekiel 28:11-19, Isaiah 14:12-20),[iii] incurring God’s judgment in the form of a flood, called the “Lucifer flood.” The Lucifer flood is indicated in Scripture by the “waters” and the “deep” of Genesis 1:2.
The rest of the first chapter of Genesis describes a re-creation or reforming of the earth from a chaotic state, not the initial creative effort. All the plant, animal, and human fossils in the rock strata date from the “Lucifer flood ” and are not genetically related to the plants and animals living today, which are a result of the re-creation described later in the chapter.
The gap theory was given widespread circulation in 1909 when Cyrus Ingersoll Scofield (1843-1921) included it in the annotations to his Scofield Reference Bible.[iv] While the gap theory does explain the presence of violence and death in the lower fossiliferous strata, the explanation is extra-biblical. The Bible divulges nothing of this hidden history, although gap theorists interpret several verses—usually only the King James translation of those verses—in such a way as to give veiled clues about the time of the “gap.”
As an accommodation of geology, the gap theory was more successful when geological opinion was open to Cuvier’s multiple catastrophes. Some of the strata could then be attributed to the “Lucifer flood” and some to the Genesis Flood. In its modern incarnations, the gap theory is strictly a device to expand the biblical time frame in order to allow time for the strata to form over the hundreds of millions of years that Lyellian geology insists upon. Modern gap theorists do not include a “Lucifer flood,” and believe that the Genesis Flood left no geological traces.
But some modern gap theorists still make Lucifer the lord of the purported gap creation.[v] One cannot help but wonder, however, why for 130 million years Lucifer’s only earthly subjects were marine animals, or why it took more than 160 million additional years for Lucifer to get some dinosaurs to rule, or why poor Lucifer was allowed to rule over the men without souls for only the final 1/10,000th of his “gap” reign.[vi]
3. The day/age theory
Another popular attempt to harmonize Lyellism and Scripture is the “day/age” theory, which holds that the days of the first chapter of Genesis are not literal twenty-four-hour periods but long epochs of millions of years.
The Hebrew word for “day,” yôm, can refer to something other than a literal twenty-four-hour period. In Genesis one, however, each yôm of the creation week is modified by an ordinal number, as in “the first day,” “the second day” etc. When so modified, yôm always means a literal twenty-four hour day.[vii]
Moreover, the phrase “there was evening and there was morning” is used to describe each of the days of the creation week. This obviously refers to the dark and light portions of a literal, twenty-four-hour day. Generally, the Hebrew text weighs heavily in favor of interpreting the days of Genesis chapter one as literal days.[viii]
Attempts to interpret the days of creation as ages or eras rather than literal days have been driven not by textual considerations but rather by a perceived need to accommodate Scripture to Lyellism.[ix]
One has to wonder why, if the days of creation were intended to indicate multi-million-year epochs, the writer of Genesis didn’t just say that? It isn’t as though ancient people could not conceive of an earth millions of years old. On the contrary, most ancients believed the earth to be much older than the Bible indicates.
For example, Plato believed that the Flood had occurred two hundred million years ago. The Babylonian historian Berosus placed the creation two million years ago. Hindu traditions that were committed to writing 1,500 years ago teach that the earth’s history can be divided up into endlessly repeating cycles of 4.32 billion years, each of which can be further subdivided into 1,000 subcycles of 4.32 million years duration. The ancient Chinese adopted similar teachings of long cycles.[x]
Obviously, the ancients were very familiar with “old earth” histories and legends; it is rather the Bible’s “young earth” narrative that is unique.
Furthermore, the animals created during a given day of the creation week do not always correspond to the fossils found in the analogous “age.” For example, the Bible teaches that birds were created on the fifth day, and then the land animals on the sixth. Gen. 1:20-25. Obviously, birds come before land animals in the biblical narrative. By contrast, fossils of land animals are found in lower sedimentary strata than the fossils of birds, and therefore land animals are thought to have lived many millions of years before the birds ever appeared. Thus, the order in which creatures appear in the Genesis days does not correspond to the order in which they appear in the Lyellian ages.[xi]
In the biblical creation account, God speaks the creation into being ex nihilo (out of nothing). There is no reason this should have taken hundreds of millions of years. The long ages are necessary to allow time for Lyellian geological “history” and Darwinian biological “history”—not because God needed more than an instant, much less more than a day, to speak the creation into being.
Moreover, unless the day/age theory is coupled with a pre-creation creation and a pre-Fall Fall such as those of the gap theory, it presents violence, predation, and death as part of the creation that God declared “very good,” and not as results of Adam’s sin. It also leaves no geological work for the Genesis Flood to perform.
4. The tranquil theory
Swedish botanist Carl Linne (Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus) (1707-1778), who is famous for having developed the binomial naming system for species, and a classification scheme for the plant and animal kingdoms, suggested that Noah’s Flood was a calm, quiet event in which the waters slowly rose and slowly subsided, without leaving any mark on the earth’s crust. This theory became known as the “tranquil theory.”
Both Lyell and Buckland seized upon the tranquil theory as a way to harmonize Scripture and uniformitarian geology. But unless coupled with the dubious pre-creation creation and pre-Fall Fall of the gap theory, the tranquil theory cannot explain death prior to the Fall of man. Moreover, the Bible describes an event of considerable violence: “all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” Gen. 7:11, 12 (NIV).
The tranquil theory makes no geological sense. Think of the destruction that local floods, tidal waves, and tsunamis cause today. Bridges, houses, automobiles, boulders and trees can be swept away and destroyed as if they were pebbles and matchsticks.
Powerful ocean currents move massive amounts of water. The south equatorial current in the Atlantic Ocean moves six million tons of water a second northward across the equator.[xii] These currents would have been even more powerful in the unbounded ocean of the Flood, and the amount of erosion and sedimentation taking place would have been immense.
Even if the Flood had risen slowly and calmly, tidal action alone would have stirred up staggeringly vast amounts of sediment that would have left an indelible mark on the Earth. It quickly became obvious that the “tranquil theory” was untenable, and it has largely been abandoned.[xiii]
5. The local flood theory
The most popular accommodationist position is that the Genesis Flood was a local, Mesopotamian valley flood. Since the mid-seventeenth century, various writers have advanced this theory. It gained wide circulation after John Pye Smith promoted it in an 1839 book entitled, On the Relation Between the Holy Scriptures and Some Parts of Geological Science. Smith argued that the Flood could have been “universal” in having wiped out all human beings then living without having affected the entire globe.
Over the years, various local floods have been put forward as having inspired the biblical flood story. British archeologist C. Leonard Woolley, while excavating the site of biblical Ur, discovered a thick layer of silt separating two layers of artifacts. But it was soon discovered that Woolley’s flood was too local to be the local flood.[xiv]
A recent local flood theory, promoted by Bob Ballard, who located the wreck of Titanic, is that the story of Noah’s Flood refers to a catastrophic filling of the Black Sea some seven thousand years ago.[xv]
There are a number of serious problems with the local flood theory. As with the other accommodationist theories, it leaves intact the Lyellian explanation of the worldwide sedimentary layers, meaning that predation and death reigned for millions of years before the creation of mankind and his Fall.
Moreover, the local flood theory cannot be reconciled with a straightforward reading of Scripture. Genesis tells of a flood that covered “all the high mountains under the entire heavens.” Moses was at pains to describe, in the most categorical language he could muster, a universal flood with universal consequences:
“The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the Ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than 20 feet.[xvi] Every living thing that moved on the earth perished —birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the Ark.” Gen. 7:18-23 (NIV, emphasis added).
After examining the Hebrew syntax of this passage, Adventist theologian Gerhard Hasel concluded:
“There is hardly any stronger way in Hebrew to emphasize total destruction of ‘all existence’ of human and animal life on earth than the way it has been expressed. The writer of the Genesis flood story employed terminology, formulae, and syntactical structures of the type that could not be more emphatic and explicit in expressing his concept of universal, worldwide flood.”[xvii]
If the Flood were merely local, it would have been absurd for Noah to spend 120 years[xviii] constructing a giant, 150-yard long barge to save him, his family, and the animals, and it would have been absurd for God to order him to do so. Noah and his family could simply have moved out of the way. In fact, anyone could have moved out of the way, defeating the purpose of the Flood.
Those who believe that a local flood could have wiped out all humanity assume that the human race dwelt only in Mesopotamia. If that long-lived race had been reproducing normally during the (at least) 1,650 years between the creation and the Flood, their numbers could easily have been in the hundreds of millions, even the billions. There is no reason to believe that their civilization was contained within the area that later came to be known as Mesopotamia.
Moreover, the Bible explicitly states that all land animals and birds were destroyed in the Flood. Are we to believe that the wild animals and birds were also limited to Mesopotamia? The only interpretation that does not shred the fabric of the biblical narrative is that the Flood was worldwide, not local.
All of the accommodationist theories—including the “diluvium” theory, the gap theory, the day/age theory, the tranquil theory, and the local flood theory—are failures. They do not merely fail to protect the integrity of the Bible, they fold, spindle, and mutilate plain biblical teachings in a procrustean attempt to make them fit Lyellian conclusions. The whole enterprise reflects a belief that the speculations of geologists are more reliable than God’s word.
Young-earth creationists, who reject Lyellism, do not dispute a law of nature, or even a fact of geology. Creationists merely reject uniformity of rate, believing instead that rapid erosion and massive sedimentation occurred around the time of the Genesis Flood. The creationist assumption and the Lyellian assumption are on the same epistemological[xix] footing: neither can be proven correct because they concern unobservable and unreproducible events of the very distant past. The Lyellian assumption is more scientific only if the term “science” is understood to include the philosophy of naturalism, which forbids any explanation, hypothesis or theory that appeals to the supernatural, or that is suggested by the Bible.[xx]
The issue is stark: geologists have adopted an interpretive principle that is directly contrary to biblical revelation. To the uniformitarian, “everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But, as the apostle Peter warned us, “they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.” 2 Peter 3:4-6 (NIV). Lyellian geologists who insist that Earth’s crust must be interpreted in light of presently observable processes and rates “deliberately forget” the Flood, just as Peter said they would.
[i] Whitcomb, John C., and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1961), pp. 93, 94.
[ii] Whitcomb, et al, at 97, citing William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, (Bridgewater Treatises, 1836), p. 94.
[iii] It is unfortunate that many critics of the gap theory have denied that these passages refer prophetically to Lucifer, not just to the kings of Tyre and Babylon. Gap theorists are correct in holding that these verses describe the origin of sin within Lucifer, the covering cherub. This event took place in heaven, however, not on earth during the hypothetical time gap between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2. See, Rev. 12:7-9; Luke 10:18.
[iv] In his book Genesis Vindicated, George McCready Price noted:
In the early part of the nineteenth century this theory was quite popular. With the rise of Lyell’s geology and the modern biological sciences, it went into eclipse for several decades; but it was revived a generation or so ago by C. I. Scofield and others . . . As it is the theory taught in the notes of the Scofield Bible, it is now very aggressively held by many who are emphatic in calling themselves fundamentalists, and who seem to regard the notes of Mr. Scofield as on a par with the Bible itself. . . . The early Reformers had some sad experiences with editions of the Bible with “explanatory” notes. They found that such notes tended to have an unfair and perverting influence on the readers; so they all finally abandoned them. Price, Genesis Vindicated, (Review and Herald, 1941), p. 291.
The Scofield notes also did much to popularize futurist views of prophecy, in which the Antichrist is described as a future bad individual who will desecrate a rebuilt Jewish temple in Jerusalem. See, e.g., Steve Wohlberg, The Antichrist Chronicles, (Ft. Worth: Texas Media Center, 2001), pp. 92-94.
[v] See Jack W. Provonsha, “The Creation/Evolution Debate in the Light of the Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan,” in Creation Reconsidered, James L. Hayward, ed. (Roseville, CA: Association of Adventist Forums, 2000), pp. 303-311.
[vi] See, Weston W. Fields, Unformed and Unfilled: A Critique of the Gap Theory, (Burgener Enterprises, 1994, republished by Master Books, Green Forest, AK); Jack C. Scofield, The Gap Theory of Genesis Chapter One; Russell Grigg, “From the Beginning of Creation: Does Genesis have a Gap?” Creation Ex Nihilo 19(2):35-38 March–May 1997, condensed version at the Answers in Genesis Ministry website, http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1132.asp; Younker, Randall W., God’s Creation, (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 1999), pp. 22, 23 (“the Active Gap Theory has not gained many supporters among Bible interpreters who have a good knowledge of Hebrew.”).
[vii] Younker, Randall W., God’s Creation, (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 1999), p. 29.
[viii] See, Hasel, Gerhard F., “The Days of Creation in Genesis Chapter 1: Literal Days or Figurative Periods/Epochs of Time?” Origins 21(1):5-38 (1994) (GRI website http://www.grisda.org/origins/21005.htm ) which is Chapter 2 of Baldwin, supra. See also Younker, at 28-36.
[ix] See, e.g., Fritz Guy, “Negotiating the Creation-Evolution Wars,” Spectrum, vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1989) (“The problem with all of these interpretations is that they are not indicated, much less demanded, by the biblical text; they are simply ad hoc attempts to make Genesis agree with geology. . . . The gap theory ignores the structure of Genesis 1, and the function of the first sentence as the thesis of the whole chapter. The day-age theory ignores the impact of the refrain, ‘There was evening and there was morning’ [Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31, NIV]”).
[x] Coffin, Harold, Origin by Design, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1983), p. 287.
[xi] Some creation week events have no analog in naturalist origins theories. For example, on the second day God separated the “waters below” from the “waters above,” creating a “firmament.” Gen. 1:6-8. The meaning of this passage is not clear, but many creationists interpret it to mean that God created an atmosphere bounded from below by the ocean and from above by a water vapor canopy which separated the atmosphere from outer space. At the flood, the vapor canopy precipitated into part of the water that flooded the earth, and the canopy was never replaced. Evolutionists, of course, deny that the vapor canopy ever existed. The vapor canopy theory remains controversial even among creationists. See, e.g., Dillow, Joseph C., The Waters Above: Earth’s Pre-flood Vapor Canopy, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981); Coffin, Harold, Origin by Design, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1980), pp. 10, 11; Oard, Michael J., An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990), pp. 26-28; Marsh, Frank Lewis, Life, Man, and Time, (Escondido, CA: Outdoor Pictures, 1967) pp. 59, 60; Whitcomb, John C., and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1961), pp. 215, 240-242, 253-258, 399-405.
[xii] Whitcomb, et al, at 100, 101.
[xiii] Whitcomb, et al, at 97-106.
[xiv] Whitcomb, et al, at 110, 111, citing George A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, (1937);G.E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957). Woolley dug five trenches at Ur, only two of which showed the flood strata. A logical inference is that the flood did not overwhelm even the entire city. There was no break in occupation of the site. Today most archaeologists and language specialists doubt that Woolley’s flood strata could be the source of the biblical Flood narrative.
[xv] Ryan, William, and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
[xvi] 15 cubits. A cubit could be 18 inches or 21 inches. Even taking an 18 inch cubit, 15 cubits is “more than 20 feet.”
[xvii] Gerhard F. Hasel, “The Biblical View of the Extent of the Flood,” Origins 2(2): 77-95 (1975), p. 78, (See Geoscience Research Institute website, http://www.grisda.org/origins/02077.htm ) quoted by Richard M. Davidson in “Biblical Evidence for the Universality of the Genesis Flood,” which is chapter 4 of Baldwin, supra. See, also Younker at 76-86.
[xviii] The 120 years comes from Genesis 6:3: “Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’” This text, like the two it is sandwiched between, is difficult to interpret. It could be interpreted as a limitation on the human lifespan. Lifespans decreased rapidly after the flood, from 600 years (Noah’s son Shem, Gen. 11:10-11) to 148 years (Nahor, Gen. 11:24-25) in just eight generations. (Abraham, the tenth generation from Noah, lived to be 175 (Gen. 25:7)). There are some problems, however, with interpreting the text as a limitation on the human lifespan. First, 120 years is not an absolute limitation on the human lifespan. The Guinness Book of World Records notes that Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France, died in 1997 at the age of 122. A woman in Brazil was believed to have lived even longer, but that case could not be documented. Second, while 120 years is not an absolute limitation, it is not a very good prediction, either. Very few people live past the age of 100. A much better prediction is found in Psalm 80:10: “The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength . . .” Even with today’s advanced medical knowledge, seventy to eighty years is the average lifespan.
Another interpretation of the text is that God was setting a probationary period for the antediluvian race. He would allow 120 years for Noah to preach and to build and provision the Ark, before the antediluvian world would be destroyed. This is the interpretation endorsed by Ellen White: “Connection with God made [Noah] strong in the strength of infinite power, while for one hundred and twenty years his solemn voice fell upon the ears of that generation in regard to events, which, so far as human wisdom could judge, were impossible.” Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 96. The early interpreters Jerome and Augustine saw Genesis 6:3 as the length of time that God had allotted for the antediluvians to repent before He sent his judgment upon them. See, Jerome, Hebrew 6.3; Augustine, The City of God 15.24. One of the Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt in 1947 also teaches that this was a period of God’s grace toward the antediluvians: “And he (Noah) preached piety for one hundred and twenty years. And no one listened to him. And he made a wooden ark, and whom he had found entered it. And the flood took place.” From the Nag Hammadi Library, “The Concept of our Great Power,” translated by Frederik Wisse. See, http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/naghamm/cgp.html.
[xix] Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge, i.e., the study of how we know what we think we know.
[xx] Honest Darwinists admit that their concept of science includes an a priori philosophical commitment to naturalism. See Phillip Johnson, “The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism,” First Things, 77:22-25 (November, 1997).
[i] Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts (Battle Creek, MI: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864), vol. 3, pp. 90-92. Reprinted in Signs of
the Times, 5:90, March 20, 1879, and in Spirit of Prophecy (Battle Creek, MI: Review and Herald, 1884), vol. 4, pp. 85-89.
[ii] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 113.
[iii] Ellen G. White, Education, pp. 128, 129.