Gap creationism

Chalmers wrote: "My own opinion, as published in 1814, is that it [Genesis 1:1] forms no part of the first day, but refers to a period of indefinite antiquity when God created the worlds out of nothing.

Other early proponents of gap creationism included Oxford University geology professor and fellow Bridgewater author William Buckland, Sharon Turner and Edward Hitchcock.

[4] In 1954, a few years before the re-emergence of young-Earth flood geology eclipsed gap creationism, influential evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm wrote in The Christian View of Science and Scripture:[4] "The gap theory has become the standard interpretation throughout hyper-orthodoxy, appearing in an endless stream of books, booklets, Bible studies, and periodical articles.

In fact, it has become so sacrosanct with some that to question it is equivalent to tampering with Sacred Scripture or to manifest modernistic leanings".Ramm's book became influential in the formation of another alternative to gap creationism, that of progressive creationism, which found favour with more conservative members of the American Scientific Affiliation (a fellowship of scientists who are Christians), with the more modernist wing of that fellowship favouring theistic evolution.

[8] Religious proponents of this form of creationism have included Oral Roberts, Cyrus I. Scofield, Harry Rimmer, Jimmy Swaggart,[9] Perry Stone, G. H. Pember, L. Allen Higley,[4] Arthur Pink, Peter Ruckman, Finis Jennings Dake, Chuck Missler, E. W. Bullinger, Charles Welch, [10] Victor Paul Wierwille,[11] Donald Grey Barnhouse, Herbert W. Armstrong, Garner Ted Armstrong, Michael Pearl and Clarence Larkin.