PREFACE

Faith and science are locked in a battle for the hearts and minds of our generation. The war is waged perhaps most intensely in the classroom and on the campus, but the battle lines have been drawn and the conflict continues unabated in our homes, our workplaces and our churches.

It hasn't always been this way. Science was birthed out of the knowledge that God had created the universe with a logic and design that could be understood. Creation was a reflection of the Creator's personality, and to pursue an understanding of the things God had made was to inquire into the nature of God Himself. Thus, rather than facing each other in antagonistic opposition, faith and science traveled the same road, hand in hand.

Circumstances had changed by the mid-nineteenth century. When Darwin introduced On the Origin of Species in the 1850s, Christians were quickly on the defensive, attempting to counter the claims of evolution with whatever weapons they could find at their disposal. Among the items in their arsenal was a theory mentioned in the writings of the early church fathers and which found its origins in Hebrew thought. If science was uncovering evidence for an earth millions, perhaps billions of years old--then this theory could provide some answers.

What had never really been openly debated suddenly became a controversial topic among theologians and academicians. If a gap did indeed exist in the creation account; if Genesis 1:1 did not flow directly into Genesis 1:2 as the next logical step in a continuous narrative, then a rethinking of the entire creation sequence was in order. On the other hand, the theory did provide room for a creation date pushed as far back into history as needed to allow for the unprecedented time spans required by contemporary scientfic discoveries.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Finis Jennings Dake grappled with this theory and found substance in what had become nothing more than a weapon to fend off those seeking to undermine the literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account. Always requiring at least "two or three plain scriptures" upon which to base his interpretation of a biblical text, Dake found in the scriptures a wealth of support for the existence of a pre-Adamite world.

As relevant in our day as it was in his, this biblical alternative to the traditional view of creation (the view that many of us have grown up with) is based on the writings of Finis Dake. Collected primarily from his seminal work God's Plan for Man and excerpts from the notes found in The Dake Annotated Reference Bible, the material in this book is essentially Dake's thought, albeit presented in a contemporary style.

It is our prayer that Another Time . . . Another Place . . . Another Man will speak to the issue of faith and science in a way that will bring both back to where they were intended by God to be--walking hand in hand.

Mark Allison, Editor
Dake Publishing, Inc.
January, 1997