Pre-Adamic Earth
The creation of the “Original Earth” was in the dateless past. It was undoubtedly a very beautiful earth, covered with vegetation and inhabited with fish, fowl, and animal life, and probably with human life. How long it continued in this condition we are not told, but an awful catastrophe came upon it and Genesis 1:2 states it became formless and void, and submerged in water and darkness. Isaiah tells us it was not originally that way. 45:18 (R.V.). “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; he is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste, he formed it to be inhabited.
What caused the earth to become a waste after its original creation is not clearly revealed. It is clear from the account of the fall of Adam and Eve that sin existed before man was created.
In that remarkable passage in Ezekiel 28:12-19 there is revealed to us under the title of The King of Tyrus a being of surpassing beauty and wisdom, who had been in Eden, the Garden of God. Not the Eden of Adam’s day, but possibly the Eden of the Earth as it was first created. This being is spoken of as the “Anointed Cherub that Covereth,” who “walked upon the “Holy Mountain of God,” and was “perfect in all his ways from the day that he was created until iniquity was found in him.” But his “heart was lifted up because of his beauty,” and his wisdom was thus corrupted.
As no King of Tyrus answering this description has existed to date, this passage is taken to be a description of Satan before his fall. The intimation in this scripture then is, that Satan, with a host of angelic beings, was placed in charge of the original or primeval earth, and that he through pride (1 Timothy 3:6; Isaiah 14:12-14) sought to be equal with God, and that to punish him the earth was thrown into a chaotic state, and Satan and his angels, amounting to a third of the angelic hosts (Rev. 12:4) were excluded from Heaven, and took up their abode in the heavenlies, the Second Heaven, located between the atmosphere of our earth and the Heaven where God dwells, and thus became the “Principalities and Powers,” and “Rulers of the Darkness of this Age,” and the “Spiritual Wickedness” in “High Places.” (the Second Heaven), of whom we are warned in Ephesians 6:12. This seems very plausible, for Satan is said to be the “Prince of the Powers of the Air” (Ephesians 2:2), and the “god of this world” (Age), and it looks as if his plan for the fall of man was a scheme to regain control of this earth.
If there were human beings on the original or Pre-Adamite earth, they were possibly involved with Satan and destroyed. In fact, the demons are believed by many to be the disembodied spirits of the inhabitants of the Pre-Adamite Earth, and their efforts to re-embody themselves in human beings, as in the days of Christ, is looked upon as evidence that they once possessed bodies similar to human bodies. Naturally the question arises, “if the inhabitants of the Pre-Adamite earth were human beings like ourselves, and were destroyed when the Pre-Adamite earth was thrown into a chaotic form, where are their fossil remains; why have we not discovered them in the soil or rocks of the earth? The answer is we have. Paleoanthropologists for years have studied skeletal remains of both Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man believed by carbon dating to have existed between 28,000 and 130,000 years ago. So science and the Bible are in harmony.
The manner in which the Pre-Adamite earth was made “formless and void,” and this refers only to the exterior surface, the inhabitableness of the earth, is clearly revealed by Peter, when he says: “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, BEING OVERFLOWED WITH WATER, perished.” 2 Peter 3:5-6. It is clear that Peter does not refer here to Noah’s flood, for the world of Noah’s day did not perish, and Peter goes on to add that “the heavens and the earth which are now (that is, have been in existence since the restoration of the earth in Genesis 1:3-31), by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men (the Great White Throne Judgment.)” Revelation 20:11-15.
The manner then in which the Pre-Adamite Earth was made “formless and void” was by water. The water which lies upon the surface of the earth is about 1/4950 part of the earths mass. If the land surface was even the water would cover it to a depth of 11 miles. Violent convulsions must have wrecked the Pre-Adamite Earth and covered its surface with the waters of its oceans. Not a living creature remained alive upon it, and its atmosphere of murky darkness hid the light of the sun, moon, and stars. To all intents and purposes it was a dead planet. The absence of the warm rays of the sun caused the earth to pass through the “winter” of its life, and the waters were congealed into ice that preserved in cold storage the remains of immense quadrupeds and winged creatures (dinosaurs) that we might know the kind of animal life that inhabited the Pre-Adamite Earth. This was probably the ice age and the Glacial Period of Geologic Times.
The prophet Jeremiah records a vision of the time. “I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was NO MAN, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. 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.” Jeremiah 4:23-26.
If this was, as it appears, an account of the destruction of the Pre-Adamite Earth, then the Pre-Adamite Earth was inhabited, and its inhabitants dwelt in cities, and God’s purpose in destroying the Pre-Adamite Earth was to erase all historic monuments and evidences of the sinfulness of its occupants.
How long a period elapsed between the creation of the earth and its becoming “formless and void” we do not know; neither do we know how long it continued in that condition, but when the time came in the purpose of God to restore the earth to its habitable state, and make it fit for the abode of man, the Bible states in Genesis He did it in six days.