The Ruined Earth.

 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 12
Listen from:
Nigh 6,000 years ago, this earth lay buried beneath a mass of waters. How long it had lain in its watery tomb—a huge, chaotic, shapeless ruin—we cannot say, for the Word of God does not, nor can science tell. But God was about to break its slumber of, perhaps, many thousand years.
The earth, as also heaven, had been created in perfection and goodness at an undated period named "the beginning" (Gen. 1:1). How long they stood reflecting the glory and wisdom of their Creator, and at what subsequent time and by what means the ruin of the earth was wrought, are, we believe, unanswered questions. Certain it is, however, that the scene of utter desolation so graphically described in the second verse of the Bible, watt not the creative work of God, for “His work is perfect;" besides which, the grandest of the Hebrew prophets has written," 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 (or "void," same word as in Gen. 1:2), He formed it to be inhabited " (Isa. 45:18).
The first three verses of the Bible, if read simply as written, answer various perplexing questions which present themselves to thoughtful readers:—verse one is a complete and comprehensive statement in itself, applying to the primitive creation of heaven and earth; verse two intimates the condition of the earth after its creation, and prior to its preparation as a home for man; and verse three refers to the first act in the six days' work in which the earth was again set up in perfection.
Ages innumerable may have rolled on while the Creator was imprinting a certain testimony on the rocks and various orderly strata in the bowels of the earth, convulsion and disaster may have followed in succession, and whole systems of organic life in countless numbers and endlessly diversified forms may have existed. All this, and much more, may be fully allowed, on scientific authority. But that man was evolved out of lower and previous conditions of life, or that the earth before its ruin, as noted in verse two of the Bible, was peopled by a race of human beings, are statements utterly opposed to Scripture, degrading to man himself, and a manifest contradiction to the ascertained facts of science. Man has not been found, and never will, although eagerly sought for in the fossil remains previous to the historical period.