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Pre-Adamic Paradigm
00:04:34
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| Timothy, you said that you believe, along with writer George Pember, that there is a possibility of a civilization that existed before Adam and Eve, and that we can find that in Genesis 1, 1 through 2. | |
| Will you explain that for us? | |
| Well, as I said in that awesome trailer you guys put together of my teaching series, you know, the Bible, the biblical narrative depicts a scenario, what's called a pre-adamic paradigm, a scenario in which things were happening in the universe before the creation of man. | |
| So in other words, before Adam showed up on the stage, there's a whole history preceding Adam. | |
| And we know that precisely because of the scripture that I cited in that video from Job, where we see that we read that the sons of God shouted for joy when the earth was created. | |
| And so that scripture alone paints this scenario, this pre-adamic paradigm in which there's some kind of a history that precedes mankind with the other sons of God. | |
| And so that's really the starting point of the biblical narrative. | |
| The starting point of our story, our story is not the very beginning. | |
| Our story comes in the procession of time. | |
| Mankind has a very specific role to play in the story, in the grander narrative. | |
| And remember that the narrative is not about us. | |
| It's about Christ. | |
| It's his story. | |
| And we are ancillary characters in his story. | |
| And so this idea of, and this is what Pember wrote about as well, the notion that the earth was created just a few days before man, there's a lot of Pember and a lot of other really good scholars, biblical scholars, theologians, who throughout the ages and even today have contended that we are misreading the first and second verse of Genesis. | |
| And of course, the first verse one through two of Genesis reads, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. | |
| And there's a whole technological unfolding. | |
| I mean, a whole, it's very intricate, Pember's argument, and there's a lot of scriptures involved. | |
| And he articulates it very well in his book, Earth's Earliest Ages, which is, I think, his magnus opus. | |
| And by the way, George H. Pember was a theologian who was writing in the 19th century. | |
| And he's a celebrated theologian. | |
| And again, he promoted the idea that the inaugural verses of the biblical narrative describe the earth in a state of utter desolation post-judgment. | |
| So in other words, the opening verses of the book of Genesis do not depict the very beginning. | |
| Instead, they depict the beginning of mankind, when mankind comes on the scene. | |
| But in fact, what we find in the opening verses of Genesis is a world that has just undergone a cataclysm post-judgment. | |
| In other words, something happened. | |
| There was some kind of a rebellion, which of course we're all familiar with that narrative in the Bible. | |
| And that Adam was created in the aftermath of that judgment that happened on the earth and in the cosmos in general. | |
| And again, it's a very intricate and detailed argument that Pember makes and others make. | |
| And sometimes this is called the gap theory. | |
| But basically, and because it's so intricate, I don't want to get into the details. | |
| But basically, when you plug all the pieces together, what Pember's arguments and the arguments of other theologians and scholars-you come up with a very different reading of Genesis 1 through 2. | |
| And I go through all of this in my book for those who are interested. | |
| And this modified reading of Genesis 1 through 2 reads as follows: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, but the earth became desolate and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. | |
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Something Happened First
00:00:31
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| So that's a very different view of the opening scene of Genesis. | |
| Now, from that perspective, now the creation of mankind is, as I said, is in the procession of time. | |
| Our appearance on the scene is following an act that preceded us. | |
| Something happened before we showed up. | |