Virtually all Bible scholars and teachers agree that the
Bible should be interpreted literally. What does that mean?
According to the late Dr. David Cooper:
"When the plain sense of the Bible makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise."
Well said!
The problem with the world is that so-called scientists have "proved" that the world is billions of years old. The problem with the Church is that too many Bible scholars believe them. The problem with the Bible scholars is that they wanted what both worlds had to offer: a livelihood from what they have been schooled to do; an air of sophistication from the world which they knew nothing about, and an ambition to recruit God into this new area of "science," meaning that if no references to any theories of evolution could be found in the Bible, some would have to be created.
In 1814 a Scottish theologian named Thomas Chalmers reportedly did just that. He opened up an enormous gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. On the far side of this gap - before the beginning - there was a "First Creation" That's when Lucifer and the angels were created, and also, according to some, a "Pre-Adamic" race of people. We have no idea how well these Pre-Adamics fared here on earth, because the Bible doesn't say anything about them.
Gap Theorists inform us that at some point between the first and second Creations, Lucifer rebelled against God, and was judged. God kicked him out of heaven, and down to earth he came tumbling, along with all the angels who followed him. We presume that all the "Pre-Adamics" were crushed in this fall, because we never hear of them again from anybody, except from the most die-hard "double-creationists."
That fall created such chaos on the surface of the earth that the Holy Spirit had to return later and re-create the earth to make it perfect again. This second creation took six days, and at that time God created the animals and man, and all the other things listed in Genesis chapter 1. The whole scenario came to be known as the "Gap Theory." Dr. C. I. Scofield bought into that theory lock, stock, and barrel. He lent wholehearted and innovative support to this radical idea, and at the beginning of his Reference Bible, attempted to prove that God, too, was an evolutionist. I suspect that Scofield's Reference Bible would have been a disaster - except that hardly anyone seems to have noticed the nonsense. His RB became extremely popular, and was the darling Bible among many Fundamentalists. It still is.
In the footnotes to Genesis 1, he writes, "But three creative acts are recorded in this chapter: (1) the heavens and the earth, v.1; (2) animal life, v 21; and (3) human life, vs 26,27. The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all the geologic ages" (RB page 3). Thus Scofield and Company opened up the Bible to accept any earth age an aspiring evolutionist might ever wish to attach to it.
There would have been nothing wrong in Scofield's dividing Creation into three creative acts. In Scripture those acts are a day or so apart. But the Bible makes it abundantly clear that those "creative acts" were started and completed in six days. Scofield ignored all rules of Bible interpretation when, on the authority of the speculations of some theologian turned evolutionary scientist wannabe, he placed the "first creative act" far back into the "dateless past."
All of this was totally contradictory to the Word of God. Scofield should have checked his Bible more carefully before propagandizing such a myth. Because of his efforts, many Christians are convinced that this Gap Theory, popularized by his RB, is true. The theory, as we have briefly pointed out, goes something like this:
Far back in the "dateless past," billions of years before the Six Day Creation, God created the heaven, the earth, the angels, and Lucifer. At some point, Lucifer rebelled against God, and many angels followed him. In judgement, God cast them out of heaven to earth. Somehow - and it is never explained how - when these weightless, spiritual beings fell to earth, they caused such a cataclysmic disruption in the earth's surface that the earth became uninhabitable. So the Spirit of God had to return, and RE-CREATE the earth again. This SECOND CREATION is the creation account we read in the Bible.
Scofield observes that "...the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of divine judgement. The face of the earth bears everywhere the marks of such a catastrophe. There are not wanting intimations which connect it with a previous testing and fall of angels" (RB, p 3). "There are not wanting intimations..." means that there is no evidence to show any of this; Scofield was guessing, or worse. At any rate, he didn't know what he was talking about.
And perhaps without realizing it, Scofield suggests that God may have lost interest when creating the earth the second time around, and was not as meticulous and thorough as the first time. He left "marks" of the catastrophe everywhere! Astute Bible scholars such as Chalmers and Scofield were able to find, between verses 1 and 2, a testing of angels, judgements of angels, cataclysmic upheavals, and evidence of God's slipshod workmanship. What remarkable scholarship! When the rest of us try to look between those verses, we see nothing.
Any theory of man which contradicts the plain sense of the Bible is bound to raise difficult questions of consistency. Hairs must be split. Dr. J. Vernon McGee, great Bible teacher, but a close follower of Scofield, sees a distinction between "made" and "created":
"In Exodus 20:11, it says, 'For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is...' There is nothing in that verse about creating. It says, 'made'; God is taking that which is already formed and in these six days He is not 'creating' but He is re-creating. He is working with matter which already exists, out of matter which He had called into existence probably billions of years before." (Thru the Bible, vol 1, p 13).
Dr. McGee makes an arbitrary distinction, because elsewhere Scripture uses "create" and "made," and even "formed," interchangeably when speaking of the act of creating. Gen 1:26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image..."; Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image..."; Genesis 2:7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground..."; Genesis 6:6: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth...; We see by these examples that Dr. McGee, like Scofield, neglected to read all relevant Scriptures in a much too hasty effort to convince his readers that the Gap Theory has merit.
We see further evidence of Scofield's hopeless search for Scriptures to prove the Gap Theory. All he could find were a few isolated verses with wording similar to that in Genesis 1:2, and nothing more. "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep..." Scofield writes, "Jer.4:23-26, Isa. 24:1; Isa. 55.18, clearly indicate that the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judgement" (RB, p 3). We would do well to read these passages thoroughly, because they do absolutely nothing to prove his case. Instead they reveal that Scofield was a careless Bible reader.
Jeremiah 4:23-26. In the footnote to these verses, Scofield writes: "'Without form and void" describes the condition of the earth as the result of the judgment (vs 24-26; Isa 24:1) which overthrew the primal order of Gen. 1:1" (RB. p 776). Scofield apparently ignored the context.
Verses 25 and 26 present a serious problem with his application of this passage. Verse 25: "I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled." Verse 26: "I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger." (If you will look again at the footnotes on page 3 of the RB, Scofield allows that only the heaven and earth were created in the "First Creative Act," in the "dateless past." Animals and man were created in "Creative Acts 2 and 3" which came after the fall and judgement. But the passage in Jeremiah implies that man vanished, and birds flew away. Where did they come from? Scofield doesn't explain.
The passage in Jeremiah, when examined in context, reveals that this was not a judgment which overthrew the "primal order," it was a judgment of the disobedient nation of Israel. We begin reading verse 14, which is still very much in context:
Verse 14: "O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?";
Verse 15: "For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim.";
Verse 16: "Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.";
Verse 17: "As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the LORD.";
Verse 18: "Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart.";
Verse 19: "My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.";
Verse 20: "Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.";
Verse 21: "How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet.";
Verse 22: "For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.";
Verse 23: "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.";
Verse 29: "The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein";
Verse 30: "And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life";
Verse 31: "For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers";
It should be clear that these verses do not support Scofield's conclusion at all. A careful reading of that passage, and a thorough analysis of the entire fourth chapter of Jeremiah, reveals that it is a prophesy of the judgement of misbehaving Israel, not prehistoric angels. Verses 23 thru 26 are the voice of lamentation over what God is forced to do to the nation of Israel, expressed in strong terms, as is often done in the Bible. Verse 26 speaks of cities being broken down. And so does verse 29, "The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen..." This cannot speak of a prehistoric event millions or billions of years before Adam, who was the first man created. There were no cities, and no horsemen or bowmen before him. Scofield himself, even in his confusion, disallows a pre-Adamic race of people on earth:
"It is by no means necessary to suppose that the life germ of seeds perished in the catastrophic judgement which overthrew the primitive order. With the restoration of dry land and light the earth would 'bring forth' as described. It was ANIMAL life which perished, the traces of which remain as fossils. Relegate fossils to the primitive creation, and no conflict of science with the Genesis cosmogony remains. Man is never found in a fossil state." Did we say confusion? On page 3 of the RB, neither man or animal were part of the "primitive creation." Now he says that animals were. Scofield seems to have adopted the habit of evolutionists, which is to constantly revise theories to suit any latest fancy.
Isaiah 24:1 Like Jeremiah, Isaiah also mentions people in this judgement, and he even identifies them as Israelites. That Scofield would try to use this verse to support the Gap Theory is unbelievable. Verse 1 speaks of "inhabitants," and verse 2 says that they were servants, masters, maids, priests, and so forth.
"Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof" (Isa. 24:1).
"And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him" (Isa. 24:2).
"The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word" (Isa. 24:3).
"The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish" (Isa. 24:4).
"The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant" (Isa. 24:5).
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left" (Isa. 24:6).
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth" is another superlative expression, which refers only to the land of Israel, not necessarily the whole earth. Nor does it mean that there was a great geologic upheaval. The Bible is simply saying that things didn't go too well for rebellious Israel at that time.
All this could not have been the result of God's judgement of prehistoric Lucifer and his angels, unless they had laws and covenants and ordinances the same as Israel. That is very doubtful. Scofield used verses to support his beloved Gap Theories, which actually defeated everything he tried to prove. But what is really eerie about this is the thousands of scholars since the early 1900's who have owned, cherished, and endorsed the Reference Bible and never said a word about Scofield's promotion of the ungodly Gap Theory. Am I missing something?
Was the earth created in the "dateless past?" By "dateless" Scofield seems to be suggesting that that the earth, and Lucifer, and angels, were created before time began, which is an impossibility. In eternity there is nothing. Nothing began, nothing ended, and nothing was created. Only one Being in three Persons existed from all eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Lucifer could not have been created before time began, else he would have been eternal, without beginning. Before God created anything, or anybody, He created heaven and earth, and started the time clock ("IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH"). Angels, man, animals, and everything else was created afterward, within this "timeframe." Although the Bible seems to indicate that God created angels to live forever, we humans receive eternal life only when we are "born again." At the end of time we will be transported into eternity, but only because we are in Christ. It is a free ride, and it is only Christ who takes us there. Revelation says that some day time will end. When that happens the world as we know it ends, and we are all ushered into eternity. Eternity doesn't begin, it only begins for us.
And forget that "age" nonsense with which modern translators try to "correct" the King James Bible, and which Scofield much too readily accepted. Age denotes the passage of time. But where there is no time there can be no "age." Age applies only to the world we live in now. When time and this "age" ends, another "age" cannot begin. This world ends, and another world begins. Therefore "world," as in the KJV, is a much more sensible choice of words.
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day" (Gen. 1:31). "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them" (Gen. 2:1).
As a Bible teacher, or Bible scholar, or whatever he thought himself to be, Scofield was a dismal failure. As a salesman who could swing millions to his way of thinking, he seemed to be without peer. His Reference Bible is still among the best selling, and most loved, Bibles on the market. We can only pray that Bible scholars will soon begin to think rationally and biblically, and begin to earn their paychecks.
HOME
"When the plain sense of the Bible makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise."
Well said!
The problem with the world is that so-called scientists have "proved" that the world is billions of years old. The problem with the Church is that too many Bible scholars believe them. The problem with the Bible scholars is that they wanted what both worlds had to offer: a livelihood from what they have been schooled to do; an air of sophistication from the world which they knew nothing about, and an ambition to recruit God into this new area of "science," meaning that if no references to any theories of evolution could be found in the Bible, some would have to be created.
In 1814 a Scottish theologian named Thomas Chalmers reportedly did just that. He opened up an enormous gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. On the far side of this gap - before the beginning - there was a "First Creation" That's when Lucifer and the angels were created, and also, according to some, a "Pre-Adamic" race of people. We have no idea how well these Pre-Adamics fared here on earth, because the Bible doesn't say anything about them.
Gap Theorists inform us that at some point between the first and second Creations, Lucifer rebelled against God, and was judged. God kicked him out of heaven, and down to earth he came tumbling, along with all the angels who followed him. We presume that all the "Pre-Adamics" were crushed in this fall, because we never hear of them again from anybody, except from the most die-hard "double-creationists."
That fall created such chaos on the surface of the earth that the Holy Spirit had to return later and re-create the earth to make it perfect again. This second creation took six days, and at that time God created the animals and man, and all the other things listed in Genesis chapter 1. The whole scenario came to be known as the "Gap Theory." Dr. C. I. Scofield bought into that theory lock, stock, and barrel. He lent wholehearted and innovative support to this radical idea, and at the beginning of his Reference Bible, attempted to prove that God, too, was an evolutionist. I suspect that Scofield's Reference Bible would have been a disaster - except that hardly anyone seems to have noticed the nonsense. His RB became extremely popular, and was the darling Bible among many Fundamentalists. It still is.
In the footnotes to Genesis 1, he writes, "But three creative acts are recorded in this chapter: (1) the heavens and the earth, v.1; (2) animal life, v 21; and (3) human life, vs 26,27. The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all the geologic ages" (RB page 3). Thus Scofield and Company opened up the Bible to accept any earth age an aspiring evolutionist might ever wish to attach to it.
There would have been nothing wrong in Scofield's dividing Creation into three creative acts. In Scripture those acts are a day or so apart. But the Bible makes it abundantly clear that those "creative acts" were started and completed in six days. Scofield ignored all rules of Bible interpretation when, on the authority of the speculations of some theologian turned evolutionary scientist wannabe, he placed the "first creative act" far back into the "dateless past."
All of this was totally contradictory to the Word of God. Scofield should have checked his Bible more carefully before propagandizing such a myth. Because of his efforts, many Christians are convinced that this Gap Theory, popularized by his RB, is true. The theory, as we have briefly pointed out, goes something like this:
Far back in the "dateless past," billions of years before the Six Day Creation, God created the heaven, the earth, the angels, and Lucifer. At some point, Lucifer rebelled against God, and many angels followed him. In judgement, God cast them out of heaven to earth. Somehow - and it is never explained how - when these weightless, spiritual beings fell to earth, they caused such a cataclysmic disruption in the earth's surface that the earth became uninhabitable. So the Spirit of God had to return, and RE-CREATE the earth again. This SECOND CREATION is the creation account we read in the Bible.
Scofield observes that "...the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of divine judgement. The face of the earth bears everywhere the marks of such a catastrophe. There are not wanting intimations which connect it with a previous testing and fall of angels" (RB, p 3). "There are not wanting intimations..." means that there is no evidence to show any of this; Scofield was guessing, or worse. At any rate, he didn't know what he was talking about.
And perhaps without realizing it, Scofield suggests that God may have lost interest when creating the earth the second time around, and was not as meticulous and thorough as the first time. He left "marks" of the catastrophe everywhere! Astute Bible scholars such as Chalmers and Scofield were able to find, between verses 1 and 2, a testing of angels, judgements of angels, cataclysmic upheavals, and evidence of God's slipshod workmanship. What remarkable scholarship! When the rest of us try to look between those verses, we see nothing.
Any theory of man which contradicts the plain sense of the Bible is bound to raise difficult questions of consistency. Hairs must be split. Dr. J. Vernon McGee, great Bible teacher, but a close follower of Scofield, sees a distinction between "made" and "created":
"In Exodus 20:11, it says, 'For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is...' There is nothing in that verse about creating. It says, 'made'; God is taking that which is already formed and in these six days He is not 'creating' but He is re-creating. He is working with matter which already exists, out of matter which He had called into existence probably billions of years before." (Thru the Bible, vol 1, p 13).
Dr. McGee makes an arbitrary distinction, because elsewhere Scripture uses "create" and "made," and even "formed," interchangeably when speaking of the act of creating. Gen 1:26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image..."; Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image..."; Genesis 2:7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground..."; Genesis 6:6: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth...; We see by these examples that Dr. McGee, like Scofield, neglected to read all relevant Scriptures in a much too hasty effort to convince his readers that the Gap Theory has merit.
We see further evidence of Scofield's hopeless search for Scriptures to prove the Gap Theory. All he could find were a few isolated verses with wording similar to that in Genesis 1:2, and nothing more. "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep..." Scofield writes, "Jer.4:23-26, Isa. 24:1; Isa. 55.18, clearly indicate that the earth had undergone a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judgement" (RB, p 3). We would do well to read these passages thoroughly, because they do absolutely nothing to prove his case. Instead they reveal that Scofield was a careless Bible reader.
Jeremiah 4:23-26. In the footnote to these verses, Scofield writes: "'Without form and void" describes the condition of the earth as the result of the judgment (vs 24-26; Isa 24:1) which overthrew the primal order of Gen. 1:1" (RB. p 776). Scofield apparently ignored the context.
Verses 25 and 26 present a serious problem with his application of this passage. Verse 25: "I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled." Verse 26: "I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger." (If you will look again at the footnotes on page 3 of the RB, Scofield allows that only the heaven and earth were created in the "First Creative Act," in the "dateless past." Animals and man were created in "Creative Acts 2 and 3" which came after the fall and judgement. But the passage in Jeremiah implies that man vanished, and birds flew away. Where did they come from? Scofield doesn't explain.
The passage in Jeremiah, when examined in context, reveals that this was not a judgment which overthrew the "primal order," it was a judgment of the disobedient nation of Israel. We begin reading verse 14, which is still very much in context:
Verse 14: "O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?";
Verse 15: "For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim.";
Verse 16: "Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.";
Verse 17: "As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the LORD.";
Verse 18: "Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart.";
Verse 19: "My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.";
Verse 20: "Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.";
Verse 21: "How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet.";
Verse 22: "For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.";
Verse 23: "I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.";
Verse 29: "The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein";
Verse 30: "And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life";
Verse 31: "For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers";
It should be clear that these verses do not support Scofield's conclusion at all. A careful reading of that passage, and a thorough analysis of the entire fourth chapter of Jeremiah, reveals that it is a prophesy of the judgement of misbehaving Israel, not prehistoric angels. Verses 23 thru 26 are the voice of lamentation over what God is forced to do to the nation of Israel, expressed in strong terms, as is often done in the Bible. Verse 26 speaks of cities being broken down. And so does verse 29, "The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen..." This cannot speak of a prehistoric event millions or billions of years before Adam, who was the first man created. There were no cities, and no horsemen or bowmen before him. Scofield himself, even in his confusion, disallows a pre-Adamic race of people on earth:
"It is by no means necessary to suppose that the life germ of seeds perished in the catastrophic judgement which overthrew the primitive order. With the restoration of dry land and light the earth would 'bring forth' as described. It was ANIMAL life which perished, the traces of which remain as fossils. Relegate fossils to the primitive creation, and no conflict of science with the Genesis cosmogony remains. Man is never found in a fossil state." Did we say confusion? On page 3 of the RB, neither man or animal were part of the "primitive creation." Now he says that animals were. Scofield seems to have adopted the habit of evolutionists, which is to constantly revise theories to suit any latest fancy.
Isaiah 24:1 Like Jeremiah, Isaiah also mentions people in this judgement, and he even identifies them as Israelites. That Scofield would try to use this verse to support the Gap Theory is unbelievable. Verse 1 speaks of "inhabitants," and verse 2 says that they were servants, masters, maids, priests, and so forth.
"Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof" (Isa. 24:1).
"And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him" (Isa. 24:2).
"The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word" (Isa. 24:3).
"The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish" (Isa. 24:4).
"The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant" (Isa. 24:5).
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left" (Isa. 24:6).
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth" is another superlative expression, which refers only to the land of Israel, not necessarily the whole earth. Nor does it mean that there was a great geologic upheaval. The Bible is simply saying that things didn't go too well for rebellious Israel at that time.
All this could not have been the result of God's judgement of prehistoric Lucifer and his angels, unless they had laws and covenants and ordinances the same as Israel. That is very doubtful. Scofield used verses to support his beloved Gap Theories, which actually defeated everything he tried to prove. But what is really eerie about this is the thousands of scholars since the early 1900's who have owned, cherished, and endorsed the Reference Bible and never said a word about Scofield's promotion of the ungodly Gap Theory. Am I missing something?
Was the earth created in the "dateless past?" By "dateless" Scofield seems to be suggesting that that the earth, and Lucifer, and angels, were created before time began, which is an impossibility. In eternity there is nothing. Nothing began, nothing ended, and nothing was created. Only one Being in three Persons existed from all eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Lucifer could not have been created before time began, else he would have been eternal, without beginning. Before God created anything, or anybody, He created heaven and earth, and started the time clock ("IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH"). Angels, man, animals, and everything else was created afterward, within this "timeframe." Although the Bible seems to indicate that God created angels to live forever, we humans receive eternal life only when we are "born again." At the end of time we will be transported into eternity, but only because we are in Christ. It is a free ride, and it is only Christ who takes us there. Revelation says that some day time will end. When that happens the world as we know it ends, and we are all ushered into eternity. Eternity doesn't begin, it only begins for us.
And forget that "age" nonsense with which modern translators try to "correct" the King James Bible, and which Scofield much too readily accepted. Age denotes the passage of time. But where there is no time there can be no "age." Age applies only to the world we live in now. When time and this "age" ends, another "age" cannot begin. This world ends, and another world begins. Therefore "world," as in the KJV, is a much more sensible choice of words.
"And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day" (Gen. 1:31). "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them" (Gen. 2:1).
As a Bible teacher, or Bible scholar, or whatever he thought himself to be, Scofield was a dismal failure. As a salesman who could swing millions to his way of thinking, he seemed to be without peer. His Reference Bible is still among the best selling, and most loved, Bibles on the market. We can only pray that Bible scholars will soon begin to think rationally and biblically, and begin to earn their paychecks.
HOME