"Could there have been human creatures, commonly called ‘pre-Adamites’, living on Earth before God created Adam? Many readers, no doubt, will think this a foolish question, but it is, in fact, the belief of many evangelicals. And leading ‘progressive creationist’ Hugh Ross teaches something similar when he says that “bipedal, tool-using, large-brained primates roamed Earth for hundreds of thousands (perhaps a million) years”.
Ross does not believe in biological evolution, although he accepts cosmic and geologic evolution and the evolutionary timescale. He also believes in the same general sequence of events and the same order of appearance as evolutionists.
Why did they ‘become extinct’? According to Ross, because the world was a place of death, violence and decay for hundreds of thousands/millions of years before the Curse recorded in Genesis 3:14–19. He makes the extraordinary statement: “The step-by-step approach to bipedal primate creation that we can see in the recent fossil record may reasonably reflect God’s understanding of the difficulty other life-forms would encounter in adapting to sinful humans.”
This is a classic example of the confusion that Christians get themselves into when they depart from the text of the Bible and allow outside influences, especially long-age naturalism, to dictate the meaning of Scripture.
In 1655, Frenchman Isaac La Peyrère published his theory that not only did Adam come from pre-
Adamic stock (rather than being formed by God from the dust of the ground), but also Cain’s wife and the inhabitants of Cain’s city came from other pre-Adamic stock.
In the 20th century, with the rise of Darwinism and the continued discovery of allegedly very old human-like fossils, many evangelicals compromised by adopting theistic evolution.
One such neo-evangelical was Londoner John R.W. Stott (who also compromises the Bible’s teaching on eternal conscious punishment for the unsaved because it offends his sensibilities). He writes: “[M]y acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-Adamic ‘hominid’ seem to have existed for thousands of years previously. … It is conceivable that God created Adam out of one of them. … I think you may even call some of them Homo sapiens … .”
Pre-Adamism of this type is also starkly contrary to what Genesis tells us about Eve, namely that God made her from one of Adam’s ribs (Genesis 2:21), not from some pre-existing creature; and that Adam named her Eve “because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20).
Hugh Ross and his fellow progressive creationists, along with the other pre-Adamite proponents, are trying to rescue the Bible from a perceived conflict with ‘science’ by reinterpreting the Bible rather than by questioning the ‘science’. This is because they erroneously think that ‘science’ speaks with more authority than God’s Word about origins and the age of the Earth.
Dr John MacArthur says, “Scripture, not science, is the ultimate test of all truth. And the further evangelicalism gets from that conviction, the less evangelical and more humanistic it becomes (emphasis added).” CMI
Ross does not believe in biological evolution, although he accepts cosmic and geologic evolution and the evolutionary timescale. He also believes in the same general sequence of events and the same order of appearance as evolutionists.
Why did they ‘become extinct’? According to Ross, because the world was a place of death, violence and decay for hundreds of thousands/millions of years before the Curse recorded in Genesis 3:14–19. He makes the extraordinary statement: “The step-by-step approach to bipedal primate creation that we can see in the recent fossil record may reasonably reflect God’s understanding of the difficulty other life-forms would encounter in adapting to sinful humans.”
This is a classic example of the confusion that Christians get themselves into when they depart from the text of the Bible and allow outside influences, especially long-age naturalism, to dictate the meaning of Scripture.
In 1655, Frenchman Isaac La Peyrère published his theory that not only did Adam come from pre-
In the 20th century, with the rise of Darwinism and the continued discovery of allegedly very old human-like fossils, many evangelicals compromised by adopting theistic evolution.
One such neo-evangelical was Londoner John R.W. Stott (who also compromises the Bible’s teaching on eternal conscious punishment for the unsaved because it offends his sensibilities). He writes: “[M]y acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-Adamic ‘hominid’ seem to have existed for thousands of years previously. … It is conceivable that God created Adam out of one of them. … I think you may even call some of them Homo sapiens … .”
Pre-Adamism of this type is also starkly contrary to what Genesis tells us about Eve, namely that God made her from one of Adam’s ribs (Genesis 2:21), not from some pre-existing creature; and that Adam named her Eve “because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20).
Implications of pre-Adamism
The Bible says nothing about the existence and death of any pre-Adamite creatures, either spirited or spiritless. Some Christians say that Adam was the first man to be made in the image of God, though there were also human-like creatures before him. But they have assumed that the alleged Pre-Adamic fossils constitute a reliable record; i.e. the fossils have been interpreted correctly in both anatomy and age. They are also, in effect, saying:- that the first land animals and man were not created by God at the same time, namely during the 24 hours of Day Six of Creation Week, as Genesis 1 clearly states;
- that the short age timescale in Genesis (obtained from the genealogies and other parts of the Bible, e.g. Mark 10:6) is not correct;
- that the Curse of death in the created world was not the result of Adam’s sin, as Genesis 3 states. If pre-Adamite creatures were living and dying for hundreds of thousands/millions of years before Adam, then the connection is lost between the first Adam, who brought physical death into the world, and the last Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ), who brought physical resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45). As Adam was federal head of the entire creation, his Fall affected everything else (Romans 8:20–22). The fact is that, Biblically, all physical death has occurred since Adam’s Fall, not before. “As sincere as they may be, those [Christians] who espouse the pre-Adamite theory and its history of death before Adam are actually endangering the very doctrine of salvation they hold dear.”
- that the ‘very good’ world which God created included carnivory, despite the Genesis 1:29–30 teaching that animals and humans were originally vegetarian.
The human fossil record reveals the pre-Adamite theory to be in error.
The Bible tells us that Adam was the first biological man—in Genesis 1–5; Hugh Ross and his fellow progressive creationists, along with the other pre-Adamite proponents, are trying to rescue the Bible from a perceived conflict with ‘science’ by reinterpreting the Bible rather than by questioning the ‘science’. This is because they erroneously think that ‘science’ speaks with more authority than God’s Word about origins and the age of the Earth.
Dr John MacArthur says, “Scripture, not science, is the ultimate test of all truth. And the further evangelicalism gets from that conviction, the less evangelical and more humanistic it becomes (emphasis added).” CMI
